Energy-saving water filters

In many parts of the world is only a limited access to clean drinking water. Desalination plants may be from sea and brackish water to make edible, but need large quantities of electricity or thermal energy. For this reason such plants are in developing countries often simply not economically viable. Oasys a spinoff of Yale University, want to change. Professor Menachem Elimelech and his Master's student Robert McGinnis and Jeffrey McCutcheon have a new desalination unit develops the necessary energy for cleaning to a tenth of current technology is limited.

Steady population growth, booming agriculture and the rising demand from the industry threatens the scarce water resources. Goldman Sachs estimates that global water consumption is doubling every 20 years. 2008 is the world market for the cool water, according to market research firm Lux Research on a volume of 522 billion U.S. dollars swollen.

The typical approach to desalination is currently on the so-called reverse osmosis - and this market alone will be in the near future, with ten percent per year. When the process is a liquid through a membrane semipermeabel held pressed. This happens with either hydraulic pressure or by thermal evaporation. The necessary amounts of energy are large, so diverse now circulate ideas, to be desalted. "Our development has been mainly through the core of the problem, the cost of energy, driven," says Aaron Mandell, head of Oasys.

The company are based on an idea, which they called osmosis technology. It will be a osmotic pressure created, rather than direct printing or heat to the water through the purifying membrane would have to drive. The approach exploits the fact that water is naturally range from a diluted to a concentration wanders when two solutions with a semipermeabel-based material will be kept apart. This will normally need to save energy, the process of reverse osmosis drives.

When Oasys system is a so-called Zuglösung on one side of the membrane is placed. It separates clean water from contaminated. The solution was developed by Oasys designed so that they have a high osmotic pressure and that, by heating still slightly later from the final product to remove. "That in itself is not new technology. The fact that here but now attempt to determine the optimal Zuglösung to find the efficient enough and the right balance between ammonia and chlorine meets, is the critical point," said Michael LoCascio, Senior Analyst at Lux Research .

The biggest challenge was, according to Mandell, a concentrated solution that can be easily and, above all, completely remove it. The exact composition is one of the trade secrets of Oasys, but it contains ammonia and carbon dioxide dissolved in water. It was also important that the solution can be reused if they are deprived of drinking water. Moreover, the membrane close to the one already in the reverse osmosis is used.

The reverse osmosis water currently produced at a cost 68 to 90 U.S. cents per cubic meter. Oasys estimates that when you approach the company to only 37 to 44 U.S. cents could be down as soon as the process is hochskaliert. The start-up has a pilot plant built with the technology in a cubic meter of water per day can be tested. Currently, the company strives to Mandell, according to venture capital funds, which then plants with a capacity of 1000 to 10,000 cubic meters per day are to be created. Commercial systems are still significantly larger.

Oasys will be initially on the recycling of waste water concentrate, which then later to the oil and gas industry could be extended. The idea: Instead of this waste must be disposed of, the Company equal to the spot with the Oasys-treat system.