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Saltworks Technologies is developing a saltwater-powered battery it says removes salt from water at a fraction of the cost of other desalination processes Curt Cherewayko Ben Sparrow’s eureka moment occurred in the middle of the night in 2005 in a train-station bathroom while he was travelling from Beijing to Shanghai. He was on a backpacking trip during a break from studies at Simon Fraser University (SFU) and had spent the night on a train mulling over how to use a thermodynamics law, in which the tension between two different concentrations of the same solution converts energy. He applied the law to salt water and realized that the voltage from the ions of a hyper-saline solution could pull salt from a third water stream as the ions naturally move from a high to low concentration of salt water. Four years later, Sparrow and his seven-person team at Vancouver-based Saltworks Technologies Inc. are making the final adjustments on a saltwater-powered battery that can desalinate water at a cost that the company says is up to 80% less than that of existing processes. Industries remove salt from water in various ways. In reverse osmosis, salt water is forced through a membrane that salt can’t penetrate. It’s essentially a hyper-pressurized filtration system. In electrodialysis, an electrical current added to salt water forces salt ions through a membrane. Both of these and other desalination processes require external and often plentiful sources of electricity. Because Saltworks’ process transfers chemical energy from the tension between salt ions, an external energy source is required only to power low-pressure pumps and a few other moving parts. A low-grade heat source (sunshine or waste heat from other industry processes will do) is also needed to evaporate salt water to the concentrations required to create the voltage. The company is in discussions with its first potential customers and has thus far survived on roughly $2 million in grants from provincial and federal technology-focused agencies, including B.C.’s Innovative Clean Energy (ICE) Fund. Saltworks is looking to close a minimum $5 million financing round in the next six months. It will use the capital to scale its pilot plant at Port Metro Vancouver, strengthen its intellectual property portfolio and build its customer base. “We would like to complete our first customer installation by 2010,” said Sparrow, who holds a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Alberta and a master of business administration from SFU. He wouldn’t disclose what potential customers Saltworks is negotiating with, but the company’s technology is widely applicable in agriculture, heavy industry and municipal facilities. Global Water Intelligence, an international water industry think-tank, estimates that the desalination market is worth US$103 billion in capital investment up to 2016. Saltworks recently presented its technology at the World Desalination Congress in Dubai – one of many regions that, despite being close to a sea coast, have little fresh water. The company’s board includes Peter Wong, CFO of Plutonic Power Corp. (PCC: TSX), and Jack Gin, founder and former CEO of Extreme CCTV, which was acquired by Robert Bosch GmbH for $93 million in 2008. Sparrow’s father Robert, a senior vice-president of SNC Lavalin Inc., also sits on Saltworks’ board. Before co-founding Saltworks in 2008, Sparrow published a paper about his idea in the peer-reviewed Journal of Desalination. The National Research Council of Canada, which has provided funding to Saltworks, has conducted some preliminary proof-testing. In August 2008, Powertech Labs Inc., a testing lab and BC Hydro subsidiary, also tested Saltworks’ technology and confirmed that it captures chemical energy to improve the desalination process. Powertech said the technology should be scalable to build plants of various commercial sizes, although the lab noted that a more detailed review is required to verify Saltworks’ claims about the technology’s energy efficiency. “In all desalination plants, just like in power plants, scale is very important in costing,” Sparrow said, “so larger plants are much cheaper to build than smaller plants.” Sparrow said a desalination plant that uses Saltworks’ process could be built at a price that is competitive with reverse-osmosis plants. He added that the real cost savings would come over time and be related to the energy efficiency of Saltworks’ process. And a desalination plant doesn’t necessarily need to be on a coast: Melville, Saskatchewan, built Canada’s first electrodialysis treatment plant to desalinate well water in 1990. Saltworks is racing against a number of other startups, all of which are trying to solve the efficiency problems that limit the potential of desalination technologies. Said Sparrow: “Other new desalination technologies are largely improvements on existing themes, whereas we are an entirely new process.” •
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This article from Business in Vancouver December 8-14, 2009; issue 1050
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