Fen Technology is developing a novel modular desalination and small municipal/sludge wastewater treatment based on bio-electrochemical systems that drastically reduces the external energy requirements compared to current technology. The system will use an optimized desalination method to be initially validated using multiphysics simulation and an optimized wastewater treatment that uses a combination of anaerobic and aerobic treatments to reduce the organic content of the wastewater while maximizing the power produced to be used in desalination.The technology will reduce the energy requirements for desalination of seawater by an order of magnitude compared to the best performing current system (reverse osmosis) and will initially be targeted at remote holiday or island resorts, which may already be using desalination to supply their freshwater needs but experiencingexcessive energy costs.
The technologies required for this optimized system have been researched previously by Fen Technology but the goal of the currentproject is to demonstrate the technical feasibility of the coupled system for this application and the improvements in performance compared to the current state of the art.
This technology would be of interest to companies that produce small distributed desalination plants. The army corps of engineers and agencies involved in disaster relief mayalso be interested