Desalination Buoys Offer Alternative To Centralized Systems
By Peak Johnson
A North Carolina startup company is developing a device that would turn ocean water into fresh drinking water. Their technology would exclusively use wave energy to power reverse osmosis.
The team of Chris Matthews, Justin Sonnett, and Laura Smailes co-founded EcoH20 Innovations in 2014. Before EcoH20, both Matthews and Sonnett began working on the SAROS desalination device during their senior year at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, where they were both studying mechanical engineering.
According to SAROS’ website, by concentrating only on water production and not producing electricity, SAROS has much higher efficiency. According to a video produced by the company, the SAROS buoy is a “floating seawater desalination system.” It utilizes the mechanical energy of ocean waves to pressurize seawater and pump it through a reverse osmosis system. By using individual buoys instead of a centralized desalination plant, the company claims that the negative impacts of a concentrated brine discharge are alleviated.
"I don’t think either of us really understood kind of the impact of this thing until we actually got what we built on the water and actually made drinking water with it and realized that this could be something that could improve the world," Sonnet said in an interview with WUNC.org.
In May, the team ran their first oceanic test off of Jennette’s Pier in Nags Head, NC. Sonnett said the results had been promising. Matthews added that with this technology, they want to help coastal communities around the world, including those in North Carolina.
In California, experiencing persistent drought, Governor Jerry Brown recently made water conservation mandatory. Communities in the state examined different options to avoid running out of water, including turning seawater into drinkable fresh water. During a drought in the early 1980s that had lasted seven years, it had been decided to build a desalination facility to turn seawater into drinking water.
However, according to NPR, the desalination facility was ready to come online in 1992, but the drought had ended by then. The facility ran for six weeks, just to make sure it worked. Then it was shut down.