Industrial Use

Utilizing low-pressure, low-energy membrane technology, Oasys Water is setting out to change the way people think about desalination. Competing technologies — including evaporation and reverse osmosis (RO) schemes — are inherently energy-intensive, and therefore cost-intensive. In this Water Online Radio interview, Lisa Marchewka, VP of strategy and marketing for Oasys, explains how forward osmosis shifts that paradigm.

Marchewka also addresses the problems of water scarcity and difficult-to-treat water, which are particularly common in one industry:

Current methods for treating salt water to make it drinkable are energy-intensive, require harsh chemicals and produce waste – but new technologies that reduce the environmental impact of desalination are in the pipeline.

Saudi Arabia’s water desalination industry is experiencing an annual growth rate of six percent – the highest in the world.

The population of the country is growing at the rate of over 2.5 percent, while the demand for water is increasing by more than 8.8 percent annually.

Furthermore, the Ministry of Water and Electricity have signed several contracts worth billions of dollars to establish new desalination facilities in the Kingdom in addition to renovating existing plants to prolong their life expectancy from 25 years to 40 years.

Six decades of providing water in a country that’s 60 percent desert have made Israel a technological leader in the field, a model that points the way for drought-stricken California.

Desalination of sea water, reuse of treated sewage for agriculture, software creating an early-warning system for leaks, computerized drip irrigation and careful accounting of every drop have become the norm in Israel, the world’s 40th biggest economy. Officials in California, which would be the 10th largest if it were a nation, are paying attention.