General Electric (GE -2.11%) announced today that it will acquire Monsal, a private biowaste-to-energy company based in the United Kingdom. Financial details were not disclosed.
Monsal specializes in harnessing energy from seemingly useless industrial wastewater, a productivity improvement that GE said it hopes to extend to more municipal government and industrial manufacturers around the world.
General Electric has a long history in wastewater treatment, but this acquisition will open up new renewable energy opportunities via Monsal's "advanced anaerobic digestion technology," according to GE. That's a way of saying tiny organisms clean up wastewater without the aid of oxygen (and create useable biogas in the process). Biogas can be combusted to generate electricity and heat.
"For many years, GE has been working to further the development of water reuse, wastewater and tough-to-treat water technologies," said GE Power & Water water and process technologies President and CEO Heiner Markhoff in a statement today. "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."
While GE didn't disclose financial details of the acquisition, today's press release calls Monsal the "advanced digestion technology supplier of choice" for U.K. waste markets. Since 2000, the company has installed over 220 anaerobic digestion systems.
