Against the backdrop of accelerating urbanization, the contradiction between water resource shortages and the long construction cycles and high investment required for water supply infrastructure is becoming increasingly prominent. Traditional water plant construction follows a "project-based" model—civil construction, equipment procurement, on-site installation and commissioning—with construction cycles often taking 12 to 24 months. This model not only involves large investments and extensive land use but also requires numerous operational personnel, and once assets are solidified, they are difficult to adjust. Faced with the rapid water demands of industrialization and urbanization, this traditional "engineering project" model has struggled to keep pace with urban development.
In May 2026, on the opening day of IFAT 2026, the world's largest environmental technology trade fair, a Chinese tech enterprise provided a disruptive answer. BlueNexus Technologies, a wholly-owned subsidiary of GreenTech Environmental (688466. SH), and Nijhuis Saur Industries, a European water giant with a 120-year history and operations in over 140 countries, officially jointly launched the fully autonomous, standardized modular water treatment robot Xinshuidao® and the AI agent Shuiluobo® in Munich. This marks the official entry of China's self-developed intelligent water treatment solutions into the global mainstream market and represents a historic leap for China in the industrial water treatment sector from "technology introduction" to "technology export."
From "Building Water Plants Like Cars" to a New Urban Development Paradigm
The birth of Xinshuidao® stems from GreenTech Environmental's decade-long commitment to its "engineering productization" strategy. In March 2023, Xinshuidao® 1.0 was officially unveiled, for the first time solidifying the design, selection, procurement, manufacturing, construction, and operational experience of water treatment plants into software and hardware, disrupting the traditional engineering model of water plants with a product-oriented mindset. In July 2024, Xinshuidao® 2.0 was released, with its core innovation being the subdivision of the water plant into 12 standardized modules based on different functions. These modules are produced, commissioned, and trial-run on factory assembly lines, and upon arrival at the site, they can be operational after simple assembly. This concept of "building water plants like cars" completely transformed water plants from "engineering projects" into "industrial products." In 2025, Xinshuidao® integrated a domestic large language inference model to launch the Shuiluobo® AI agent, completing a comprehensive upgrade from hardware equipment to full-lifecycle intelligent operation and maintenance.
Three "90%" Redefine Urban Water Supply Infrastructure
Based on data accumulation and know-how from over 20 years of experience in more than 100 project constructions and operations, GreenTech Environmental has deeply solidified industry experience and AI algorithms into the Xinshuidao® product. Compared to traditional water treatment projects, it has achieved three revolutionary "90%" breakthroughs:
1. 90% Reduction in Footprint: Traditional water plants occupy vast areas, whereas Xinshuidao®, through highly integrated design, concentrates core functional areas into standardized equipment that can be quickly assembled on-site. Taking the Zhoushan Xinshuidao 2.0 high-quality reclaimed water plant as an example, with a daily treatment capacity of 20,000 tons, it occupies only 300 square meters, transforming the water plant from a "mega civil structure" into "compact equipment," greatly freeing up urban land resources.
2. 90% Reduction in Delivery Cycle: Traditional water plant construction takes 12-24 months, while Xinshuidao®, through factory prefabrication and on-site assembly, drastically compresses the construction period. The Wuxi Longting Xinshuidao 2.0 reclaimed water plant completed on-site modular installation, water supply, and delivery in just 15 days, achieving "instant water supply." This speed advantage is particularly prominent in emergency water supply and disaster relief scenarios.
3. 90% Reduction in Operational Personnel: Traditional water plants require dozens of people working in three shifts, while Xinshuidao®, paired with the Shuiluobo® AI agent, achieves "unattended" operation. In a project involving five water plants built by GreenTech Environmental in Xishan District, Wuxi, only 10 people were needed to complete all operational management, saving 90% on manpower, reducing equipment failure rates by 50%, chemical consumption by 15%, power consumption by 30%, and comprehensive operational costs by 35%.
Full-Lifecycle Cost Reduction and Efficiency Enhancement: While achieving the three "90%" targets, the Xinshuidao® product also reduces full-lifecycle costs by approximately 50%, with a water resource recycling rate exceeding 70%. Furthermore, mobility is another disruptive feature—when an enterprise adjusts its production capacity or needs to relocate, the entire water plant can be dismantled and reassembled at a new site, completely avoiding the investment waste caused by asset solidification in traditional water plants.
AI Agent Shuiluobo®: "Embodied Intelligence" Drives Unattended Water Plants
The productization of Xinshuidao® is inseparable from the deep empowerment of AI technology. The self-developed Shuiluobo® AI agent not only carries the company's proprietary process optimization prediction and decision-making models but also combines computer vision, auditory, infrared, and other perceptual AI models, along with the DeepSeek large language reasoning model, forming a full-chain intelligent closed loop from perception to decision-making, from online to offline.
The Shuiluobo® AI agent can autonomously predict the optimal chemical dosage, backwash cycle, and membrane flux control parameters based on changes in incoming water quality, achieving real-time dynamic control of key process units such as coagulation, sedimentation, filtration, and membrane separation. The system possesses intelligent closed-loop capabilities for self-optimization and self-diagnosis, while also equipped with a self-built multimodal neural network algorithm. It continuously iterates using the company's accumulated vast internal knowledge and data, ultimately realizing unattended intelligent operation and maintenance of the water plant. GreenTech Environmental has thus become the first enterprise in the water industry to receive certification from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology as an "AI Industry Innovation Scenario Application Case."
Broad Application Prospects in Urban Development
By the end of 2025, GreenTech Environmental had cumulatively delivered 13 sets of Xinshuidao® products, covering industrial sectors such as electronics, photovoltaics, semiconductors, thermal power, and chemicals, as well as municipal sectors. Representative projects include: the Wuxi Longting project, where effluent is reused by Jianding Electronics and Nengda Thermal Power; the Zhoushan project, serving the high-standard production water needs of heterojunction battery enterprises; the Kaifeng Lankao project, where effluent is mainly reused for mobile phone backplane production lines; and the Taiyuan Yangqu project, treating wastewater from lithium battery separator and chip silicon wafer production. These projects have effectively solved a package of problems faced by cities, industrial parks, and industrial enterprises, including water resource shortages, insufficient environmental capacity, and high water costs.
In the international market, Xinshuidao® has already achieved the export of two product sets to Thailand, marking a breakthrough in overseas product sales. In April 2026, BlueNexus Technologies signed a supply agreement worth $15.1 million with Medisun to supply four sets of Xinshuidao® intelligent water purification equipment to the Middle East, signifying the official entry of China's intelligent water treatment robots into the Middle East, the world's most critical industrial water market.
For overseas markets, GreenTech Environmental primarily offers three standardized capacity modules: 2,000 m³/day, 5,000 m³/day, and 10,000 m³/day. The water production scale can cover 2,000 to 50,000 tons/day, integrating the triple functions of water supply, sewage treatment, and recycling/reuse. These modules can be flexibly combined and rapidly scaled up or down according to customer needs, serving multiple scenarios such as industrial parks, large industrial enterprises, urban water resource regeneration, and temporary or emergency water supply.
This strategic cooperation with Nijhuis Saur Industries, a European water giant with a century-old history, signifies that the Xinshuidao® product has been incorporated into the core product system of a global top-tier water platform for industrialized promotion, creating a new paradigm where Chinese core technology is recognized by international giants and jointly promoted to the global market. Wilbert Menkveld, Chief Technology Officer of Nijhuis Saur Industries, stated: "By combining fixed process flows, intelligent software, and modular design, we achieve faster implementation speeds, lower investment and operational costs, and a fundamentally different approach to industrial water supply."
A Paradigm Revolution in Urban Water Supply Infrastructure
The essence of Xinshuidao® is transforming water plants from "custom projects" into "standardized equipment," realizing a paradigm revolution from on-site construction to factory manufacturing. This transformation holds profound significance for the urban development sector on three levels:
In terms of engineering paradigm, "project to product" fundamentally breaks the pain points of long construction cycles, high investment, and large land occupation associated with traditional water plants. The project implementation cycle is shortened from years to months or even weeks, providing unprecedented flexibility for rapid response and mobile deployment of urban infrastructure. When a city's water supply demand changes, Xinshuidao® modules can be flexibly relocated, rapidly expanded, and immediately reused.
In terms of operational paradigm, "AI becomes the expert" fully realizes autonomous operation and maintenance of water plants. The Shuiluobo® AI agent undertakes operational management functions that previously required a team of professional engineers, significantly reducing the full-lifecycle labor costs and management complexity of water plants, ushering the operation and maintenance of urban water supply infrastructure into the "autonomous driving" era.
In terms of industrial landscape, China's intelligent manufacturing is stepping onto the high-end stage of the global water sector. As a Chinese listed company that is the "developer and applicator of large-scale water treatment robots," GreenTech Environmental, represented by Xinshuidao®, possesses fully independent intellectual property rights from core technology to system integration. This marks a leap for China's water treatment industry from "bringing in" to "going out." As China's urbanization process enters a new phase of parallel stock quality improvement and incremental optimization, the productized, modular, and intelligent water treatment model represented by Xinshuidao® is redefining the construction and operation methods of urban water supply infrastructure, becoming a key technological tool for ensuring urban water resource security and supporting high-quality urban development.