$850bn to clean up china's filthy water supply, page-10

Alum vs Phoslock

Both products remove/deactivate phosphate ( a fertilser) from water bodies.

Fertiliser is great in your garden - but not so much in lakes and canals where it promotes toxic algae growth.

Alum is what it sounds like it is - aluminium.

Alum (Aluminium Sulphate) has been used in North America and Europe for more than three decades to inactivate algae-causing phosphate.

Phoslock is a relatively new commercial product that is emerging as an effective blue-green algae management tool.

Aluminium is released from Alum, causing toxic effects to aquatic organisms - use of aluminium based materials is now being restricted in some jurisdictions by health authorities.

Efficiency of Alum reduces with increasing pH - at pH7, phosphate binding efficiency is only 55% and at a pH8, the average pH when there is a moderate algal bloom, binding efficiency falls to 20%.

Phoslock, in contrast, has a phosphate binding efficiency of 90%+ over a range of pH levels.

Phoslock is a patented, natural, modified bentonite clay - an enhanced version of the clay health food stores sell to absorb toxins from the human gastro-intestinal tract.

Which leads to Phoslocks biggest advantage - it has been approved in the US to treat drinking water - Alum has not, and never will be, due to aluminium's toxicity and implications in the development of Alzheimer's disease.

There are multiple other benefits I've not described here - Phoslock has been around for 10 years now, chipping away at existing Alum markets and not available to Alum, and their efforts are about to pay off in a big way.

(if you believe the chart, the big buyers, and Phoslock's assertion in last month's quarterly that two large new contracts, one in Asia, are nearing completion)

Looking very good short term, medium term and long term!