GE acquires UK wastewater treatment firm Monsal

GE has agreed to acquire Monsal, a private UK-based water, waste, advanced anaerobic digestion and integrated biogas-to-energy business, officials said on Tuesday.

With Monsal's advanced anaerobic digestion technology and industry knowledge, GE will be able to help municipalities and industrial manufacturers shift from disposing wastewater treatment byproducts to generating renewable energy and other value from their streams.

The acquisition of Monsal will enhance GE's wastewater treatment product offerings and further GE's commitment to energy reduction in wastewater treatment, according to company officials.

GE will use its global reach, as well as commercial and execution capability, to take Monsal's technology, integrate it with its own and proliferate it across the world.

"For many years, GE has been working to further the development of water reuse, wastewater and tough-to-treat water technologies," said Heiner Markhoff, CEO of water and process technologies for GE Power & Water. "The acquisition of Monsal, with its advanced anaerobic digestion technology, will enable us to provide our customers with more energy-efficient options for water treatment solutions. Now our wastewater treatment solutions can be combined with new, advanced anaerobic digestion technologies to convert biosolids to renewable sources of energy for our customers."

Monsal, based in Mansfield, UK, provides advanced technology to treat biosolids and biowaste and convert it into renewable energy and saleable byproducts. Anaerobic digestion is a biological process in which microorganisms break down biodegradable material in the absence of oxygen. 

"GE's global expertise and reach in the municipal and industrial water treatment industry is world class and is very complementary to Monsal's advanced digestion capabilities and our overall strategy for international expansion,"  said Aidan Cumiskey, managing director of Monsal. "Joining the GE family will allow Monsal to bring our technologies to a significantly broader audience as well as give us R &D capabilities at a much larger scale than we have now. We expect to expand our product and technology range with the GE resource, so that we become the 'go-to' company globally for anaerobic digestion."

One of the end products is biogas, which can be combusted to generate electricity and heat—a feature that GE Power & Water's distributed power business can achieve with Jenbacher gas engines, according to GE Officials.

Monsal is one of the UK's leading advanced anaerobic digestion and integrated biogas-to-energy businesses with over 200 installed anaerobic digestion systems. Monsal has particular expertise in optimizing anaerobic digestion assets to create strategic renewable energy centers for the water and waste markets.