Water is a precious resource: but happily, in an era of increasing water scarcity, Whitewater is leading the charge in developing and supplying treatment solutions to ensure that water is used efficiently and sustainably at organisations across Europe. With over 90 years of operation behind it, Whitewater stands out from its competitors as a reliable and innovative partner in the water treatment industry. Richard Hagan met with Associate Director
of Business
Development Eoin Gilsenan and produced this report.
From its headquarters in Ireland, Whitewater offers its clients a comprehensive portfolio of water treatment services across the UK and Europe. The company designs and manufactures bespoke, turn-key treatment solutions for clients’ specific needs, all wrapped around the critical goal of sustainability. Whitewater also provides a robust after-sales technical service offering, ensuring that customer installations perform at the highest levels throughout the systems’ lifespan.
Back at the lab
In the world of water treatment, there is no one-size-fits-all solution, according to Associate Director of Business Development Eoin Gilsenan, and therefore every new project starts in the lab: “We have a large customer base, all of whom require their water to be treated to a specific level. We sample the raw water at the client’s site and examine it in the lab to establish what needs to be done in terms of treatment to bring the water up to the client’s specifications.
“Using that information, we are then able to design bespoke installations for the client’s needs, in full collaboration with the client. From there, we’re able to build and then install and commission the systems on the client’s site.”
Whitewater operates across multiple sectors, with customers spanning data centres, pharmaceutical, industrial, municipal and healthcare sectors.
To ensure that the company’s Europewide network of customers is properly attended to, Whitewater maintains a staff of 70 skilled employees spread throughout five locations around Europe. Outside of its head office in Bray County, Wicklow in Ireland, it has an office in the UK and satellite offices in Sweden, Italy and Spain. Additional locations are being investigated for rollout in the near future. Several teams of trained, experienced staff are assigned to each of the company’s operational sectors.
Sustainable design
Whitewater is laser-focused on sustainability and the sustainable use of water – in fact, it’s a core philosophy at the company.
The company is particularly interested in solving the problem of the waste stream that is necessarily produced as a result of the treatment process.
“Our philosophy is to try and minimise that waste stream generation by maximising every drop of water that comes in,” said Mr Gilsenan. “Wastewater is now seen as a resource. So, we’re looking at how can we reuse and recycle that wastewater, and we’re putting the technology in place to maximise the finite resource of water and minimise the generation of waste.”
This process is being given additional impetus by the company’s clients who are also intensely interested in becoming more sustainable; but it’s especially true of Whitewater’s data centre clients, as Mr Gilsenan confirmed: “The data centre space is growing exponentially, and water is a major requirement for those because they consume vast amounts of it for their cooling processes. Given the scarcity of water, water treatment is essential for
that industry. But within that market, there’s an awful lot of interrogation of sustainability imperatives.”
Reusing Sweden’s snow
This focus on sustainability has led to some truly impressive outcomes in terms of Whitewater’s treatment solutions. “We’re now able to recycle and reuse wastewater streams generated on-site,” Mr Gilsenan explained. “But we’re also finding that the geographical locations of these data centres have created an opportunity for us
to produce solutions that maximise water usage in unique ways, as our design principles are focused on the
sustainable use of local water sources. We’re at the top of the industry with regard to our ability to identify those solutions and solve those problems.”
A recent project for a major technology company’s data centre in Sweden is a prime example. Here, Whitewater developed a modular water treatment plant for the treatment of rainwater and snow melt for the source water for the data centre, but which also includes blow-down recovery solutions.
Recycling this blow-down water – used within the cooling system – up to six times before sending it off-site as waste – the
new modular treatment plant was able to recover a total of 60% of the blow-down water used by the data centre, with only 40% discharged off-site. “These numbers provide real value to the client because no drop is wasted and the use of every drop on-site is maximised,” said Mr Gilsenan.
The plant was completely designed in- house at Whitewater, manufactured and pre-commissioned by its partners in Ireland, and then shipped to Sweden where the installation was coordinated with the client’s on-site team. The new treatment plant, which uses exclusively non-potable sources of water for the entire data centre’s needs, resulted in one of the greenest data centres in Scandinavia. It was such a success that the client has since ordered four more plants with even greater water reuse functionality – all of which have already been delivered.
Moving with the tech times
“Water treatment companies like Whitewater are essential in ensuring the smooth operation and sustainability of data centres,” said Mr Gilsenan. “The demand for efficient and sustainable water treatment solutions in the data centre industry is expected to grow in the coming years as more companies shift towards digitalisation and the use of cloud-based services.
“With our recent expansion into Europe, spearheaded by our investment into new offices in Italy, Spain and Sweden, we’re demonstrating our commitment to providing water treatment solutions to the data centre industry across Europe.”
Concluding, Mr Gilsenan added: “We expect that this move will enable us to expand our operations in these markets and support our existing customer base, while also enabling us to attract new clients and increase revenue. Added to our investments in research and development, we are well-positioned to meet the evolving needs of our clients and to capitalise on the growing demand for sustainable water treatment solutions.” n
