Success Stories

3XR Inc.
Cleaning our water and greening our fields

Ken Haggerty, founder and owner of Toronto’s 3XR Inc. says, “Innovation is the fulcrum on which Ontario’s future pivots.” He is intent on helping turn us in a greener direction.

3XR has developed technology that meets several important needs, including improved water quality, energy and cost savings, and environmentally sustainable products.

Existing technology for treating the organic matter that pollutes wastewater releases ammonia, a harmful pollutant.  Removing the ammonia creates carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide – also known as N2O – a greenhouse gas 300 times more harmful to our atmosphere than carbon dioxide.

Not surprisingly, wastewater treatment plants are under pressure to reduce these discharges.

3XR’s technology can remove up to 90 percent of the ammonia in treated wastewater. It converts the dissolved ammonia into ammonia gas, then exposes the gas to an acidic solution, creating ammonium sulphate, an environmentally sustainable fertilizer.

“Fertilizer extracted and purified out of local wastewater is much better for the environment than chemically-produced fertilizer that has to be transported over long distances,” says Haggerty.

“Our process is also expected to use up to 80 per cent less energy than current technology, while costing significantly less.”

Haggerty wasn’t always convinced that Ontario’s future would lie in new technologies.

After graduating as a civil engineer from the University of Alberta, he spent many years in the housing construction industry and in shopping centre development.

A death in his family in 1994 prompted him to reassess his priorities.

And while working in the housing sector, he’d seen a growing need worldwide for sustainable water treatment technologies.

Haggerty went back to school and gained a Master’s degree in Environmental Engineering at the University of Toronto. After forming his company in 1997, and after several years of intensive R&D, 3XR’s technology was good to go.

Meanwhile, the Ontario Centres of Excellence — part of the province’s Ontario Network of Excellence (ONE) — provided his company with business guidance. 

3XR found funding support too. Haggerty says, “Ontario’s support for my company through its Innovation Demonstration Fund, as well as federal funding from the Sustainable Development Technology Canada (SDTC) and Industrial Research Assistance Program (IRAP) , has enabled us to proceed in this country. We’ve been approached by other jurisdictions, but with this support, we can stay right here in Ontario.”

Ontario’s investment, along with cooperation from CCI-TBN and Toronto Water is helping 3XR build a $2 million demonstration facility at an anaerobic digestion facility for food waste in the GTA. 

Haggerty expects it to be up and running by the end of August 2011, cleaning 200 cubic metres of wastewater per day.

After that, he says, “We expect to be manufacturing and distributing a lot of these machines around the world” – demonstrating the economic benefits available when innovators turn problems into businesses opportunities.

3XR currently employs five full-time employees – all with Master’s degrees. It will hire eight more people over the course of the demonstration project, and it expects to leverage Ontario’s investment into hundreds of jobs over the next decade.