Helios Innovations takes the dirtiest waste and wastewater streams from heavy industry and helps them reduce their waste by using the heat and energy they have already consumed.
- " Then they don't have to pay expensive transportation costs and can reuse the water in their processes," says Erik Rosengren of Helios Innovations .
The innovation itself is about evaporation, where Helios Innovations has found a way to purify liquids at very low temperatures. Heat flows in industries at this temperature level are largely unutilized and with Helios Innovations' modular plants, industries can quickly take advantage of this energy.
- You could say that we are purifying, or making water available, because much of the waste is water," says Jonatan Persson of Helios Innovations.
It was in the spring of 2017 that Helios founder Jonatan Persson got the idea for the evaporation technology that forms the basis of what is today an award-winning and successful startup company. In 2022 and 2023, Helios Innovations participated in the innovation actor BizMaker's Forest Business Accelerator program. Partner companies in the program are SCA, IBM and RISE.
During the program, Helios Innovation conducted a feasibility study with SCA. The need to test SCA's residual product arose, so Erik Rosengren rented a Volvo in Sundsvall, loaded it with 250 kilos of biosludge and drove it down to the plant in Lund.
- This type of biosludge was difficult to handle in our equipment, but thanks to such a large volume, we managed to find a way to pre-treat the waste so that our technology can treat it," says Erik.
In addition to purely technical developments, the contact with SCA also provided a greater understanding of how they can work with larger companies like SCA.
- We got very concrete lessons thanks to the program, which is not only applicable in the paper industry but can also be used in other segments, says Jonatan Persson.
The big market is in the process industry and in the longer term this is where they are aiming for. But here and now the customers are in the automotive and manufacturing industries where the need to find waste management solutions is greatest.
- "Instead of focusing on the large volume aspect, we look at where we can make the most benefit per dollar invested, and this applies to very environmentally harmful process water flows for which there are currently no treatment technologies," says Jonatan.
For example, this can include so-called PFAS-related waste. This is an umbrella term for a group of thousands of different chemicals that do not break down in nature and can be harmful to both the environment and humans for thousands of years.
- In many cases, this waste consists of 95-99 percent water and there are no other options to deal with the waste than to transport it across the country and then burn it. For them, we are really the only solution without incineration," says Erik Rosengren.
Currently, there is a dialog with half a dozen customers who want to set up Helios Innovation's module at their plant to gain access to the technology and two larger commercial plants are being commissioned at an industry in Halmstad.
Helios Innovation is among the first to deal with this type of highly contaminated process water flows, so in the waste track they have a great opportunity to take a leading position both in the Nordic region and in the rest of Europe in the long term.
By 2025, they hope to have made progress in the paper industry as well.
- "It's not possible to run all the world's paper mills on residual heat, but if we can improve the efficiency of paper mills in Sweden by five or six percent, it will affect up to 1% of Sweden's total carbon dioxide emissions just by implementing our technology," says Jonatan Persson.
CONTACT:
Jonatan Persson, jonatan.persson@heliosinnovations.se
+46 76-703 63 08
