Piloting a Business Model for Sensor-Controlled Riverbank Filtration

To make more high-quality water available for agriculture and ease the demand on groundwater resources, The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) and the University of Rhode Island built upon a proven water treatment system that converts low-quality river water into high-quality irrigation water by pumping it from the river toward a riverbank well.

There, auto-regenerative filtration processes remove dissolved and suspended contaminants, including bacteria, without chemicals or complex equipment.

TERIs innovation adds field sensors that determine how much water is needed to irrigate crops and uses that information to pump only the amount of water needed, which prevents overuse.