Aqua Membranes, a startup changing the membrane filtration industry with its unique 3D printed spacer technology for water filtration, announced $2.1M in financing. The fundraise will accelerate the production of energy-saving water filtration technology.

Why does this matter?

• Membrane filtration has become the leading method of treating water and wastewater streams for the last 40 years. However, there have been few solutions that reduce costs while minimizing membrane fouling, which results in decreased output and expensive maintenance.
• Aqua Membranes is creating technology to reduce the energy requirements for the world’s purified water needs.
• “Reverse osmosis water filtration is utilized in almost every industry we encounter daily. Every day, 277 gigawatt-hours of electricity are used just to convert seawater into 25 billion gallons of drinkable water,” said Craig Beckman, CEO of Aqua Membranes.
• Aqua Membranes, Inc. has the potential to mitigate 2.5 gigatons of carbon emissions between now and 2050 through better water filtration technology – higher efficiency, and lower cost.
• Their technology optimizes flow patterns and turbulence through the membranes to minimize the entrapment of particulates and organic fouling (longer lifetime and less maintenance). Due to an increase in efficiency, costs per gallon of water is less than conventional systems.

What’s next?

• Their next-gen water filtration technology increases the effectiveness of reverse osmosis while dramatically reducing the energy requirements.
• Aqua Membranes advantages include lower cost and less waste, which are already proven, are only the beginning. This technology improves the performance of existing membrane applications and expands its potential applications.
• The innovation is not limited to spiral wound membrane elements and can be used in many other filtration and separation applications including desalination, food processing, and residential and mobile reverse osmosis.

Thoughts

Reverse osmosis seems to be an overlooked aspect in cleantech. However, the truth is that improvements in underlying process technology can have positive impact to inputs/resources to a process. Aqua Membranes’ underlying technology improvement decreases energy usage and increases system efficiency. Process hardware is ready for a disruption for the better – to innovate upon current processes to make them more resource efficient.