Reimagining Wastewater Treatment Like LEGO®: The Aquablocks Story
- Joshua Bon Roco
- Mar 8
- 3 min read
Innovation in wastewater treatment rarely begins inside a laboratory. More often, it starts with a practical question raised in the field.
Years ago, while working with my startup company, Anthroserv, a meeting with a small manufacturing business owner in Valenzuela left a lasting impression. I was pitching installing a wastewater treatment plant for his facility. After reviewing the proposal, he asked a question that many small enterprises quietly think but rarely say out loud:
“Why would we invest in infrastructure that costs nearly half of what I spent building my own factory?”
It would be just easier to comply through other means. *wink*
It was an honest question. And it exposed a structural problem in how wastewater management systems are implemented. The Philippine wastewater compliance frameworks assume that industries have the financial and spatial capacity of large corporations. In reality, a significant portion of the Philippine industrial landscape is composed of micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs). These businesses often operate under tight capital constraints, limited space, and in some cases, leased facilities.
At that moment, it became clear that traditional wastewater management was often misaligned with the realities faced by MSMEs.
Make no mistake–they are willing to comply, but not to that extent.
To this day, I strongly advocate for Water Quality Management Area (WQMA)-wide assimilative capacity–based regulations, where discharge standards are aligned with the actual carrying capacity of receiving water bodies rather than imposing uniform expectations across vastly different contexts.
Rethinking the Wastewater Treatment Plant
That encounter triggered a design rethink.
Instead of approaching wastewater treatment as a large, fixed infrastructure project, the goal became to design a system that could respond to three critical realities:
Flexibility – capable of handling both domestic and industrial effluents
Modularity – adaptable to businesses operating in leased or constrained spaces
Affordability – viable under limited-resource conditions
The solution drew inspiration from a familiar engineering principle. Chemical engineers routinely analyze industrial systems through unit operations, breaking complex processes into smaller functional components that can be arranged through a block flow diagram.
If chemical plants could be designed this way, why not wastewater treatment plants?
The Aquablocks Concept
This idea eventually evolved into a concept called Aquablocks.
Borrowing inspiration from LEGO®, the system treated wastewater treatment plants as a set
of modular building blocks. Each block represented a specific treatment unit operation. These units could then be combined, rearranged, or expanded depending on influent characteristics, regulatory requirements, and site limitations.
Rather than building a large monolithic treatment facility, the approach focused on assembling only the essential process components needed to produce a functional and HAZOP-safe wastewater treatment system.
The design went through several iterations. Each prototype aimed to refine the balance between operational performance, simplicity, and cost.
A Patent Years in the Making
After multiple design cycles and years of development, the concept has now come full circle. The invention has officially been granted a patent!
Patent Title: A Modular Wastewater Treatment System
Registration Number: PH12023050003
Registration Date: 27 February 2026
Patent details are available through the Intellectual Property Office of the Philippines: https://wipopublish.ipophil.gov.ph/wopublish-search/public/detail/patents?id=PH12023050003
The Quiet Success of a Prototype
Perhaps the most satisfying outcome is not the patent itself.
One of the early prototypes developed from this concept is still operational today after several years in service. The system is currently being used by another research team as part of their ongoing R&D work.
Seeing an idea survive beyond its original project timeline and continue to serve a technical purpose is a quiet but meaningful milestone.
Looking Ahead
At one point, the ambition behind Aquablocks was a national-scale deployment for MSMEs across the Philippines, where we mass produce unit ops/process blocks. The vision was to enable smaller industries to comply with environmental standards without facing prohibitive infrastructure costs.
But life, as it tends to do, sends people down different paths.
Still, seeing the concept formally recognized and knowing that the technology continues to function in real-world conditions is a moment worth celebrating. Engineering ideas often take years to mature. Occasionally, they even get a patent along the way.
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