Airports intrigue me. Fortunately, as I spend a fair bit of time passing through them. They are places where we are all displaced people, not-at-home and not-yet-at our destination. Somewhere in between worlds. Effectively incognito as I chat with strangers pretending to watch baseball with a Sam Adams. Momentarily lost in transit.
In a given year over 9 billion passengers share this experience.
They are humming heraclitean ephemeral cities. In a constant state of dynamic flux. I often hear tell of the water and wastewater infrastructure needs of these unique agglomerations. How to deal with glycol from aircraft de-icing. (The glycol recovery market, uses similar technology to the ammonia recovery market). Veolia handles glycol at Heathrow airport using biological treatment. The need to deal with PFAS from Fire-fighting foams used in fire-drills and real life emergency events. The stormwater management from massive runways and carparks during intense storms to prevent pollution.
The inability to manage intense rainfall led a shut down of Dubai airport! Not to mention handling the water and sanitation needs of 2.4 million passengers per day in the USA alone, is consequential even allowing for average dwell-time. Add to this, water filtering re-fill stations which are ubiquitous.
They are weird and wonderful places, with weird and wonderful stories. Perhaps the one that tops them all, is from Schipol Airport, as relayed to me by Wilbert Menkveld. Schipol Airport, like many airports, has an issue, with people trafficking drugs illegally. Often concealed in prophylactics hidden on or inside their person. People sometimes get second thoughts about this decision, understandably they get a little bit nervous and jittery and this leads to an emergency trip to the washroom, where voluntarily or involuntarily, they part ways with the contraband, which still sealed safely inside a rubber tube, makes its way to the airport wastewater treatment plant where it gets caught caught in screens at the inlet works.
The first sign that something awry was up was when it was noticed on the CCTV system that there was some unexplained mysterious nighttime visitors to the airport wastewater treatment plant at 2am in the morning. We could call it an unofficial circular economy I guess. This form of sewer mining, arguably may me more profitable on a € per kg basis, when compared to more pedestrian but also valuable resources, such as phosphorus.
In our BlueTech Analyst alert, this week, I noted the RTI International just licensed its water filter monitoring solution to Aquantix Technologies LLC and has references at Denver Airport among others, which reminded me of this whole area of opportunity.
Airports have stable revenue. A prerequisite for being a good client.
So I look at the airport sector as a unique water market vertical that often flys ‘under the radar’, no pun intended. With multiple diverse opportunities in a private market.
