Forward Water Technologies
Technology brief
Proprietary, low energy desalination technology for drinking water production and purification of mining and fracking produced water.
Description of the technical advantages
For seawater desalination, our technology operates with significantly reduced energy input (> 80%) when compared to incumbent technologies (i.e. reverse osmosis and thermal distillation). Our process requires mild heating (50 deg C) to facilitate one of the unit operations. Importantly, the energy input needed for this step can be acquired by accessing the abundant waste heat generated by thermal power plants. The FWT technology can remediate mining and fracking produced water with very high (up to 15 wt. %) salt concentrations. Lastly, because of the low operating pressures and low operating temperature, our process is expected to have significantly reduced CAPEX and OPEX requirements.
The sustainability of the technical advantages
This low OPEX and CAPEX desalination technology underpins sustainable potable water production and process water remediation. Access to potable water is one of the greatest (if not the greatest) challenges facing the world that if left unattended will threaten human health, food supplies, industry competiveness and political stability. Forward Water’s proprietary technology has the potential to unlock an abundant supply of potable water through seawater desalination while reducing industry’s strain on fresh water supplies by effectively and efficiently remediating produced industrial water.
Risk of the technology
Forward Water’s technology has been demonstrated at the “kiloscale” (throughput of ca. 1 litre/h). At this scale, we have demonstrated flux rates of 28 L/m2/h (c.f. reverse osmosis flux rates of 30 l/m2/h), continuous operation for over 750h, compatibility with commercially available membranes, and validation of the 2 principle unit operations that makeup the overall process. To date, these studies have been conducted with simulated samples of seawater (3 wt. % NaCl) and frackwater (7 and 15 wt. % of NaCl). Future activities will focus on scaling up our process by designing and constructing a semi-continuous demonstration system that will target a throughput of 20 l/h. This unit will be used to further refine our process and validate its use with actual seawater samples and end-user supplied produced water. The results of this study will be used to design a continuous field/pilot unit with a targeted throughput of 300 m3/day. This scale of unit will allow us to deploy a test unit at a mining site and trigger early revenue for the company.
Prospective market value/business value
For waste (produced) water remediation, we are developing a build and operate business model predicated on securing 50% of the costs savings our technology can provide end-users who currently pay between $8-10 USD/barrel to ship produced water offsite for remediation. The value we provide is estimated at $30/m3. Based on this value, the company expects to grow its market share (within the Marcellus shale alone) to 9.3% and with an EBITDA of $33M USD by 2020. For seawater desalinate, we are developing a licensing business model predicated on securing 10% of the costs savings our technology can provide end-users who currently rely on RO for desalination. The value (cost savings) we provide is estimated at $0.20/m3. Based on this value, the company expects to grow its market share to 2.3% (market size is 2020 estimated to by 146M m3/day) and with an EBITDA of $17M USD by 2020.