Aquaver is a

cleantech Clean technology, also called cleantech or climate tech, is any process, product, or service that reduces negative environmental impacts through significant energy efficiency improvements, the sustainable use of resources, or environmental prote ...

company headquartered in

Voorburg Voorburg () is a town and former municipality in the west part of the province of South Holland, Netherlands. Together with the town Leidschendam and the village Stompwijk, it merged into the municipality of Leidschendam-Voorburg in 2002. Sit ...

Netherlands , Terminology of the Low Countries, informally Holland, is a country in Northwestern Europe, with Caribbean Netherlands, overseas territories in the Caribbean. It is the largest of the four constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Nether ...

, with offices at the

High Tech Campus Eindhoven The High Tech Campus Eindhoven is a high tech center and R&D ecosystem on the Southern edge of the Dutch city of Eindhoven. As of 2024, this campus is home to 300 companies and institutions, comprising over 12,500 product developers, researche ...

. Aquaver is acknowledged to be the first company worldwide to develop commercial systems based on membrane distillation, a novel technology for water treatment.

Technology

The technology of the Aquaver systems is based on membrane distillation. Membrane distillation combines membrane separation and

distillation Distillation, also classical distillation, is the process of separating the component substances of a liquid mixture of two or more chemically discrete substances; the separation process is realized by way of the selective boiling of the mixt ...

, with hydrophobic membranes and differences in vapour pressure. The Vacuum Multi Effect Membrane Distillation (VMEMD) configuration used in Aquaver systems adds the advantages of low-temperature operation and multi-effects to the membrane distillation characteristics. Aquaver has collaborated with memsys and

Philips Koninklijke Philips N.V. (), simply branded Philips, is a Dutch multinational health technology company that was founded in Eindhoven in 1891. Since 1997, its world headquarters have been situated in Amsterdam, though the Benelux headquarter ...

to develop its water treatment systems.

Applications

Aquaver membrane distillation units are focused at

desalination Desalination is a process that removes mineral components from saline water. More generally, desalination is the removal of salts and minerals from a substance. One example is Soil salinity control, soil desalination. This is important for agric ...

industrial water treatment Industrial may refer to: Industry * Industrial archaeology, the study of the history of the industry * Industrial engineering, engineering dealing with the optimization of complex industrial processes or systems * Industrial city, a city domina ...

, and 'difficult-to-treat' waters. In February 2014 Aquaver commissioned in Gulhi,

Maldives The Maldives, officially the Republic of Maldives, and historically known as the Maldive Islands, is an Archipelagic state, archipelagic country in South Asia located in the Indian Ocean. The Maldives is southwest of Sri Lanka and India, abou ...

, the world's first desalination plant based on membrane distillation. The desalination plant makes use of the waste-heat produced by the existing diesel generators, which provide electricity to the island, to power the water purification process. Aquaver is also participating with Abengoa and Masdar in a 7.9 million dollar project to develop an innovative desalination pilot plant in Ghantoot city, in

Abu Dhabi Abu Dhabi is the capital city of the United Arab Emirates. The city is the seat of the Abu Dhabi Central Capital District, the capital city of the Emirate of Abu Dhabi, and the UAE's List of cities in the United Arab Emirates, second-most popu ...

’s border with

Dubai Dubai (Help:IPA/English, /duːˈbaɪ/ Help:Pronunciation respelling key, ''doo-BYE''; Modern Standard Arabic, Modern Standard Arabic: ; Emirati Arabic, Emirati Arabic: , Romanization of Arabic, romanized: Help:IPA/English, /diˈbej/) is the Lis ...

. The desalination plant will have a capacity of producing 1,000 m3/d of desalted water using a hybrid system consisting in reverse osmosis in combination with an innovative membrane distillation system, provided by Aquaver, to optimize the traditional reverse osmosis process.

Awards

Aquaver has received the Water Innovator of the Year 2013 and the

Frost & Sullivan Frost & Sullivan is an American business consulting firm. It offers market research and analysis, growth strategy consulting, and corporate training. It has about 45 offices in the Americas, Africa, Asia and Europe; the principal office is in Sa ...

2014 European New Product Innovation Leadership AwardFrost & Sullivan Best Practices Awards
/ref> for the development of its membrane distillation

water treatment Water treatment is any process that improves the quality of water to make it appropriate for a specific end-use. The end use may be drinking, industrial water supply, irrigation, river flow maintenance, water recreation or many other uses, ...

systems.

Merge

In 2015 Aquaver merged with memsys, which provides the membrane distillation modules used in Aquaver systems. The Aquaver management team, who started the company and brought membrane distillation to the market, has left to start other new ventures.

References

External links