BloomAlert Co-Founders Enzo García (L) and Tomás Acuña
Desalination plants are the source of drinking water for millions of people living in regions with high water stress. However, water production is affected by coastal pollution and swells, resulting in losses of up to 30 per cent of the production.
Two Chileans, Enzo García (marine ecologist) and Tomás Acuña (an expert in applied remote sensing), are here to address this pressing problem using advanced technologies.
“The primary motivation for starting Bloom Alert stems from our deep desire to develop disruptive technology that allows solving the global water crisis,” said Co-Founder and CEO García. “Around the world, approximately 18,000 desalination plants produce more than 60 million cubic metre of fresh desalinated water daily. Our estimates indicate that about US$3 billion are lost annually due to operating inefficiencies and extreme environmental events.”
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Bloom Alert provides water quality monitoring and risk management software, which, through its forecast and alert system, allows desalination plant operators to anticipate and manage events that put their operations at risk. It employs satellite images and artificial intelligence (AI) to avoid water production loss.
“For the first time in the market, risk intelligence and management software incorporate satellite-based environment monitoring into its industrial operation routines, integrating oceanographic modelling as the basis of a water security strategy,” García noted.
“At the heart of the system is ETL-prefect, a computer library written in Python and developed to perform extraction, processing, and loading of satellite data from various sources, such as NASA and the European Space Agency, thus executing our intelligence and risk management models based on more than 20 years of available satellite information,” he elaborated.
Bloom Alert’s solution has been deployed in Chile’s mining corporations BHP and Teck, which work 100 per cent of their mining processes with desalinated water.
Garcia claims the startup currently serves 65 per cent of the installed desalination capacity in Chile, which means it protects the daily production of almost 600,000 cubic metres of fresh water, vital for the country’s social and economic development.
Bootstrapped so far, Bloom Alert plans to close this financial year with US$1 million in sales.
The startup is also raising its first investment round, which will allow it to scale its product to new global markets.
Bloom Alert is one of the 55 RVLT 50 Startups selected for the 11th edition of the Lee Kuan Yew Global Business Plan Competition (LKYGBPC) run by Singapore Management University’s Institute of Innovation and Entrepreneurship. The competition, to be held from September 11-15, 2023, will act as a springboard for the company to explore opportunities in Asia and Southeast Asia.
“Asia is one of the leading technological developers of the desalination industry and responsible for 19 per cent of world water production. In addition, it is the gateway to the Middle East and North Africa markets, which concentrates more than half of the installed desalination capacity in the world,” he shared.
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However, the company expects to experience several challenges as it grows. “The main challenge at the beginning of our company was to get the industry to trust a new product created locally by a team of young professionals. In the future, new challenges will continue to appear as we implement more complex Artificial Intelligence logics, where people and operators will have to learn to trust algorithms as the basis of their daily work,” he went on.
Comparing the startup ecosystems of Chile and Singapore, he said although the Chilean government offers significant support programmes for entrepreneurship, the investment ecosystem tends to be very conservative, so it is challenging for startups in natural resources to find support for an expansion plan.
“On the other hand, Singapore has a mature investment landscape, with many VC firms, angel investors, and private equity firms, which has positioned the region as one of the best countries to develop technology-based businesses. We hope to be part of this ecosystem and collaborate with the incredible technological development of Singapore and the region,” he concluded.
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Image Credit: Bloom Alert
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