Advancing Water Intelligence for Global Sustainability
AquaSense AI Solutions
AquaSense AI Solutions is a water-intelligence company building IoT- and AI-based continuous water-quality monitoring, estimating BOD in hours instead of days. Most treatment plants currently rely on lab tests that take up to five days to come back — by which point conditions on-site have often already changed. AquaSense AI closes that gap with continuous, sensor-based estimates that are always checked against the trusted lab method, built on a Brazil–UK research partnership between CTI Renato Archer, Fundação CPQD and Birmingham City University.
Vision
A world where water quality is known in hours, not days — so every treatment plant, industrial site, and farm can act on today’s conditions instead of reacting to a lab result that’s already five days old.
Mission
To close the gap between how fast water changes and how slowly we’re able to measure it, by combining low-cost sensors, a treatment bioreactor, and AI to continuously estimate water quality — always validated against the trusted lab method, never replacing it. We’re bringing this technology from municipal wastewater treatment to the industries and agricultural systems, across the world, that depend on safe, sustainable water reuse.
Community Impact
A five-day lab result doesn’t just slow down a treatment plant — it means the river downstream, the farms drawing on that water, and the families relying on it never really know what they’re getting until it’s too late to do much about it. That’s who we’re building this for. When a plant can see a problem the same day instead of five days later, that’s cleaner water reaching a community before harm is done, not after. We see the same pattern in the fields and fish farms we work with through our agricultural water reuse and aquaculture research: safer water there means livelihoods that hold up over time. And because this technology grew out of a partnership between researchers in Brazil and the UK, training the next generation has been part of the story from day one — postgraduate students at Birmingham City University have worked alongside us on a live water-technology venture, not just a classroom case study.
Headquarters STEAMhouse, Birmingham City University, UK
Technology origin CTI Renato Archer & Fundação CPQD, Brazil
Contact contact@aquasense-ai.com
Leadership
Anaximenis Tales Silva — Co-Founder & CEO
Anaximenis Tales Silva co-founded AquaSense AI Solutions and leads the company as CEO. Having lived and worked in both the UK and the Middle East, he has seen firsthand the contrast between the Middle East’s acute water scarcity and demanding industrial water-treatment challenges and the UK’s more resource-rich but tightly regulated water sector — an experience that shaped his conviction that faster, continuous water-quality monitoring is needed on both ends of that spectrum, not only where water is scarce. He is also a Strategic Partner to CTI Renato Archer, part of Brazil’s Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation, and works closely with Fundação CPQD and SABESP on the open-innovation partnership behind the company’s core sensing technology. Anaximenis is based at AquaSense AI’s UK base at STEAMhouse, Birmingham City University, where he also collaborates with BCU’s AI and sustainability research community.
Under his leadership, AquaSense AI’s work spans two centres: a technical team and laboratory in Brazil — alongside partners CTI Renato Archer and Fundação CPQD — focused on the core sensing technology, and a UK team, based in Birmingham, focused on applying AI and data-science models on top of it.
Academic Collaboration
AquaSense AI works closely with Birmingham City University’s AI and sustainability research community, hosted at BCU’s STEAMhouse innovation hub. The company has offered placement opportunities to BCU postgraduate students — including MSc and PhD candidates in Computer Science, Machine Learning and AI — giving them hands-on experience with a live water-technology venture.
Business studies students, alongside machine learning and AI placement students, have also produced case studies on AquaSense AI’s approach to water-quality monitoring as part of their coursework.
Open Innovation Partners
CTI Renato Archer
Brazilian federal R&D institute (Campinas, SP)
Origin of the core sensing and modelling technology; co-owner of the patent
Fundação CPQD
Research and development foundation (Campinas, SP)
Co-owner of the patent.
SABESPÂ
São Paulo’s state water and wastewater utility
Field validation partner at Bragança Paulista and Barueri.
FINEP
Brazilian innovation funding agency
Non dilutive funding partner (with industrial partner Jonfra Automação Industrial) for prototype development.
University of BrasÃlia (UnB)
Academic partner on the agricultural water-reuse safety research programme
funded through BrasÃlia’s FAPDF programme.
Most water treatment plants find out how clean their water is from a lab test that takes up to five days — by the time the answer comes back, conditions on-site have often already changed. AquaSense AI helps close that gap. Our system uses sensors and a small treatment chamber to continuously estimate that same result in hours instead of days, always checked against the trusted lab method, never replacing it.
This technology was developed by two Brazilian research institutions, CTI Renato Archer and Fundação CPQD, and is protected by a patent they jointly own. AquaSense AI Solutions, based at STEAMhouse, Birmingham City University, UK, is the partner bringing it to market — starting with municipal wastewater treatment, and now extending it to industries with more demanding waste streams, including refining and petrochemicals, as well as agricultural water reuse and aquaculture.
