Using rice hulls to solve water scarcity

In order to address water scarcity, we have to get better at reusing the water we're already using, and we're also going to have to be desalinating more seawater. In order to do both of those, we need low-cost, sustainable, green filtration products. Rice hulls are the biggest agriculture waste product in the world; they are mostly burnt worldwide–218 billion pounds a year–but cleantech startup Glanris has developed a process to turn rice hulls into a sustainable, low cost hybrid filtration media that removes organics as well as metals from water. It’s a circular economy solution that turns rice hulls into a high-performance hybrid water filtration media. It’s faster, more efficient and significantly cheaper than traditional water filtration methods. "This is the thing that ultimately got me most excited about it." Bryan Eagle the founder of Glanris said. "... if we can stop burning hulls and turn it into a water filtration media, not only do you stop billions of pounds of greenhouse gases from being produced every year, but you're sequestering carbon for the next 10,000 years." According to Bryan Eagle, using rice hulls is up to 20 percent more effective at filtration, in 1/3 of the time, and at 1/10th of the cost. "So, better, faster, cheaper. We’re a hybrid; our methods do several things in one filter, so you only have to use one tank, compared to traditional filtration methods which use four tanks to get inferior results." Glanris have raised $2 million and opened their first production facility in Mississippi. https://www.glanris.com/ https://www.greenbiz.com/article/startup-using-rice-hulls-solve-water-scarcity