Our roots.

Our History.

The birth of the Sensiblue and background of the inventor

About J.P.P. Tholen

Ir. Drs. J.P.P. Tholen studied Applied Physics at the Technical University of Delft and Economics at the Erasmus University in Rotterdam. Since 1980 he was active in engineering and the design of water treatment units at a subsidiary company of Hoogovens. He started as an independent consultant in 1991 in the field of membrane technology. In 1991 Jan founded the Dutch Membrane Association (NMG) of which he was chairman until 2001. The NMG now has over 500 members.

Electrolysis

Since 1980 Jan developed his deep knowledge of electrodialysis and membrane electrolysis and in 1992 he founded a second company. This company developed and produced machines for the production of chlorine with salt electrolysis for public swimming pools and sold machines to industrial companies and farmers to reduce their waste water and to reuse as much water and chemicals as possible.

At the end of the 90’s Jan got involved in a project for the production of water vending machines that were installed in grocery stores which allowed clients to fill their own bottles of fresh drinking water. In the vending machine the drinking water was dechlorinated with active carbon so a small addition of new chlorine was needed. Unfortunately the concept failed due the fact that the quality of the water could not be guaranteed if clients filled their own reused bottle.

Birth of Sensiblue

Jan developed the idea to control the chlorination with the flow of the water by means of a turbine in the flow. A small test showed that enough energy was available in the waterflow to produce disinfecting oxidants such as chlorine. Yet it was difficult to measure and create enough disinfectants especially because the water was desalinated. So the addition of salt was needed.

Thinking about this a beautiful concept for small-scale self-controlling chlorination of flowing water without external power and intrinsically safe to prevent overdosing became clear. A patent search showed that this concept was unique.

The first concept was named Turbokiller and was introduced in the market in 2001. In the mean time it won the Dutch DSM innovation price in the early 2000s. After the prototyping phase the second generation was introduced (type 312) of which several hundreds units were produced and sold. In 2012 the third generation (Model 315) was introduced and the name of the product was changed into Sensiblue. The company Sensiblue B.V. was established together with the manufacturer Heycop and during all production batches of the 3rd generation we kept on improving the product and intend to keep on doing this.

Over a thousand units of the 3rd generation have now been sold and many customers have units of the 2nd generation and 3rd generation still providing safe drinking water to date.

In 2021 we’ve started working on designing the 4th generation of Sensiblue, we’re currently testing this product and expecting to release it early 2024.