Is water the new gas? Gas is almost as high in cost as water, but there is new technology to bring the cost back down.

Yes, even with the high cost of gas in the 4 dollar something range, it is still cheaper than bottled water. The water that comes out of your municipal tap, often could be what ends up in your bottled water. A company in the Silicon Valley area in California has a new take on water purification. The standard process, which is getting more economical for non Middle Eastern countries, is reverse osmosis. The process of squeezing salt water through fine membranes, has come down in cost a lot in the past 10 years, but is still expensive. Typically desalinization plants of size are often located near power plants on the ocean’s edge because of the large volume of water they take in for their cooling systems. Mixing the high brine water with this large volume of water seems to be a favored strategy.

Energy Recovery Inc. is a newer IPO that raised a decent sum of $68 million for operations and research. While the company has been around for 15 years, it is in a growth field. With the continuing trend of people loving to live in coastal communities, like Santa Cruz California, the demand on water supplies exceeds supply. California has a long coastline with many cities located on the water. This system could potentially make an economically feasible supply an inexhaustible source of clean fresh water. The likelihood of global warming continuing coupled with more seniors retiring and living longer, will put a greater strain on the local water systems.

Santa Cruz County has salt water intrusion problems in part because we do a lot of farming, and the population has grown. Real estate without water has little value. Farms that have depleted their land due to saltwater intrusion or lack of enough water to wash out the pesticides, often becomes suitable for homes. Santa Cruz is working hard to solve their water problems and provide enough water for the vital agriculture in our community.

The PX Pressure Exchanger developed by Energy Recovery Inc., has helped the company tap into a market that they expect will grow 13% annually as more coastal communities throughout the world grapple with varying rain falls and increasing growth. Follow the link above to see how it works.

When you do the desalinization process, it requires electric pumps to compress the water to squeeze the salt water through fine membranes, then to pump that salty brine away. The process is energy intensive, and therefore costly. What the new pump has managed to achieve is recycle the pressurized water energy to pressurize the next batch. Their new energy saving pump is based in a rotary positive displacement pump principle, and has been well received. These pumps recover energy from the high-pressure waste stream at up to 98% efficiency. This new pump technology can help reduce the cost of water production to less than half the cost without energy recovery.

So impressive is this technology that the company was awarded by Global Water Intelligence, the Environmental Contribution of the Year Award in 2007 for environmental stewardship in the water industry for their ability of a water/wastewater plant to leave a small environmental footprint.

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