Water. Desalination + reuse
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28 Far Site March 2017 Water. desalination + reuse 'Our capex is on a par with traditional desal' An installation of Voltea's CapDi technology at a horticultre client in Mexico. Growers can adjust the level of salt in their irrgation water to enable optimal yield from tomato plants, and to grow peppers for the fi rst time A single Voltea CapDi module COMMERCIALISATION • Company has a twofold go-to- market strategy comprising direct sales and system integrators CHALLENGER • Voltea sees itself as a challenger to RO in reuse The commercialisation of Voltea's electrodialysis-based desalination technology, CapDI, is happening apace says chief executive Bryan Brister. The company's go-to-market strategy is twofold: First, it has a direct sales force in Europe and north America; and second, it's building out a network of system and application integrators. The strategy has reaped rewards, par- ticularly in the US, Mexico and Canada, which have supplied 70 of growth in the past 18 months. "I don't see that letting up in the next two to three years. North America is going to continue to lead in terms of innovating, and implementing innovate tech- nologies," says Brister. So what is Voltea selling? Its CapDi (capacitative deionisa- tion) technology is based on the tried and tested process of electrodialysis. The CapDi units have two plates in between which water ' ows, one having positively charged electrodes and the other negatively charged electrodes. The negatively charged salt molecules stick to the positively charged plate, and vice versa. "It's electrodialysis. There's nothing unique about that," says Brister. The clever — and patented — part, comes in the continuous regeneration process, whereby the polarity of the surfaces is ' ipped in order to clean o" salt once they become saturated. To prevent the salt from simply jumping over to the oppositely charged plate, the plates are covered in a coating that prevents either negatively or positively charged salt molecules from moving back and forth. "That gives us an elegant way to trap the salt in that middle ' ow channel. We simply rinse it away, and then ' ip back to purifying again. It's the lowest cost way to take salt out of water on the planet," says Brister. The technology focuses on brackish water with salinity levels up to about 3,000 parts per million of total dissolved salts. In many cases, it is used as a ˜ nal polishing step in water reuse systems in light commercial and industrial applications. Successful in- stallations have included in reuse systems for commer- cial laundry operations, and