The UK technology business Evove has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Saudi Arabia government corporation Saline Water Conversion Corporation (SWCC) to take advanced membrane technologies to industrial trials for water and mineral production from seawater, leading to industrial-scale piloting in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) as part of drive for next-generation solutions.
At Evove’s enabling the future of desalination in the KSA event, SWCC gathered solution providers globally to discuss how to create the next generation of desalination in the kingdom.
Following the future of desalination conference co-hosted with Global Water Intelligence in September 2022, SWCC created a platform to answer questions such as how to make $0.2/m3 seawater desalination a reality, how to cut carbon emissions of the industry by 50% and how to grow non-water revenue streams by 10% of the total.
The CEO of Evove, Chris Wyres, gave a keynote presentation about delivering transformational advancements with additive manufacturing. He compared how rapidly the semiconductor sector has developed with the potential of desalination; by combining advanced material science with precision engineering and additive manufacturing of filtration membranes.
The head of SWCC’s desalination technologies research institute (DTRI), Tariq Al-Ghaffari, engaged with Evove on its use of highly selective graphene membranes and 3D-printed spacers to reduce energy consumption in reverse osmosis process. They are to be tested in desal plant on Gulf coast.
Coupling water production with recovery of precious resources, especially magnesium, from desalination brines is a key advantage of Evove’s proposition.
Wyres said, “As society decarbonises, building new capacity for low-energy water production is key. We will see green desalination becoming a part of more nations’ water supplies. The ability to make transformational desalination membrane technologies is a key factor in circular, green water and mineral factories.”
