Organization  NanOasis Technologies, Inc.
Website  www.nanoasisinc.com
Point of Contact Dr. Jason Holt

With ARPA-E’s financial support, NanOasis will utilize carbon nanotubes to create industrially-scalable reverse osmosis (RO) membranes that could transform desalination and wastewater reuse and produce dramatic energy savings. Reverse osmosis is used to provide potable water by desalinating three main sources of input water: brackish inland waters, municipal wastewater, and seawater. NanOasis is developing RO membranes that will be ten times more permeable than existing membranes. These new membranes will not require any modifications to existing desalination plants. NanOasis’ membranes will be packaged in the industry standard form-factor so they can be drop-in replacements in existing plants. With their low cost and high energy savings, customers could recover their investments in membrane technology within a matter of months. NanOasis’ membrane technology could reduce reverse osmosis energy consumption by 30 to 50 percent in existing desalination plants by the drop-in replacement of legacy RO membrane elements with NanOasis’ ultra low pressure elements. In new desalination plants optimized around NanOasis’ membrane technology, the total cost of water could be reduced by up to 40 percent by the combination of energy savings, membrane savings and smaller, less complex, lower cost facilities that could yield the same water output. If successful, this project could revolutionize the field of desalination and wastewater reuse and yield an estimated 290 trillion watt in energy savings over 10 years, corresponding to 177 million tons of carbon dioxide.