Breakthrough Water Technology Company of the Year
Desalitech
What is it?
The developer of a closed-circuit reverse osmosis system that recirculates the brine until it reaches a certain concentration before being expelled from the system.
What has it done?
Desalitech’s system delivers a dramatically higher recovery rate than traditional RO systems, while more exactly matching energy consumption to the actual osmotic pressure of the recirculating feedwater. Orders for the system tripled in 2015 as the technology turned mainstream.
What makes it special?
Desalitech is cutting a swathe through the market for commercial RO systems, notching up sales to Coca-Cola, Southern California Edison, and Novelis, among other Fortune 500 companies. With water efficiency a key priority for many industrial water users, Desalitech’s high-recovery, low-energy system has become the decisive solution.
Speaking at last year’s International Desalination Association World Congress, experts including Tony Fane, Menachem Elimelech, and Gary Amy are increasingly convinced that Desalitech’s closed-circuit desalination system offers a key pathway to drive the energy consumed in salt separation towards its thermodynamic minimum.
The slow build-up of salinity in aquifers and waterways is one of the great environmental challenges of our age. Desalitech’s breakthrough technology represents a remarkable step towards a practical, affordable solution.
Distinction
Orège
What is it?
A French company which has developed two proprietary technologies: the SOFHYS advanced oxidation system and the SLG biosolids conditioning process.
What has it done?
In 2015, Orège’s SLG technology became a global phenomenon, with sales in the US, Germany and France. Besides this rapid commercialisation, the company also developed its business model to offer a range of mobile and fixed facilities on lease and “try then buy” models, complementing the traditional equipment sales model.
What makes it special?
Besides reducing sludge volumes by up to 60%, the SLG system produces much higher dewatering and thickening capture rates resulting in a much cleaner filtrate return to the headworks. – and reduces odours. After Roquebrune on the Côte d’Azur fitted an SLG system, complaints about smells from the local wastewater treatment plant almost vanished in 2015.
Orège entered the US market at the beginning of last year, and by the end of 2015 had three pilot plants up and running, one of which – in Allentown (Pennsylvania) – led to an immediate commercial sale.
As wastewater treatment standards rise across the world, sludge volumes are becoming increasingly difficult to manage. Orège’s technology delivers impressive and immediate savings to every wastewater utility where sludge volumes have become a problem.
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