Energy Recovery Inc. (ERI), a company based in San Leandro, California, has developed technology that reduces the amount of energy required for desalination.

The technology does not directly relate to filtering water, but instead harnesses the pressure in the wastewater stream of reverse osmosis systems and transfers that pressure to the incoming feed stream to reduce the (more…)

More than $88 billion will be invested in desalination technologies worldwide from 2010 to 2016 as regions face dwindling supplies of freshwater and steep population growth, according to a new report. Declining costs associated with several key desalination technologies — including reverse osmosis — will make saltwater- (more…)

Water agencies facing droughts and shortages of freshwater, such as in coastal California, have been turning increasingly to desalination this year.

However, current desalination methods can be expensive and energy inefficient. Watchdog groups prefer water conservation and efficiency efforts, and charge that tapping the oceans for potable water can pollute waterways and kill marine creatures.

Yet could desalination become more viable and efficient? The Global Cleantech 100 list anointed several companies with that aspiration as technology innovators earlier this month. (more…)

The NATO Science for Peace Program and the Middle East Desalination Research Center (MEDRC) recently awarded grants to researchers at Ben Gurion University of the Negev to continue working on a novel desalination method.  In a region where potable water sources are so scarce, these methods are crucial to water independence and reducing reliance upon imported water sources (which require a lot of fossil fuels).

The team, lead by Dr. Jack Gilron (Zuckerberg Institute for Water Research) and Professor Eli Korin (Department of Chemical Engineering), has developed a desalination method by reverse osmosis that exploits “the finite kinetics of membrane fouling processes by periodically changing the conditions leading to membrane fouling before it can occur.”

(more…)