SolMem
Solar-Driven Water and Wastewater Treatment

From agriculture to oil production and mining, fresh water is a resource businesses cannot afford to waste. While innovative water management and wastewater cleaning equipment are used to combat the shortage, their sheer size and cost are disconcerting factors for active deployment. Set against this backdrop, SolMem, an innovative technology and service provider, plans to enable businesses and nations with desalination requirements to procure fresh water through a proprietary solar driven membrane desalination technology. SolMem’s solar-powered and energy-efficient unit enables users to operate the systems at lower CAPEX and OPEX through clean and sustainable energy, reducing its users' energy bill significantly. Simple and cost-effective, SolMem’s technology shows great promise for the customers in remote locations, who don't have accesses to fresh water supplies or lack of reliable power.

“Our solution allows high fresh water recovery from various utility industry waste water and natural water sources. We can achieve near zero liquid discharge at low costs and high efficiency,” says Dr. Qilin Li, founder of SolMem. As the utilities industry sector rides on the reduce, reuse and recycle motto, SolMem’s technology enables businesses in sectors such as oil and gas or mining to reclaim clean water from their wastewater sources and reduce the brine discharge more efficiently than ever before. “In the US, producing a single barrel of oil can generate six to nine barrels of waste water, causing a huge disposal hurdle. By extracting fresh water out of the produced water, we can solve the water sourcing problem in addition to addressing the disposal issue,” adds Dr. Li.

Through the use of novel membrane materials, SolMem’s technology converts the solar irradiation directly into thermal energy needed for membrane distillation, eliminating the low thermal efficiency and low water recovery issues of the conventional membrane distillation process. In addition, SolMem uses a patent-pending, highly compact multi-effective membrane distillation reactor design to replace the usually large, complex, multiple chamber design of a multi-effect distillation process, which drastically cuts down on the size of the overall system, reducing the capital investment while delivering high energy efficiency. These innovations promise significant returns on investments.

Collaborating with various entities, SolMem is setting up pilot studies of their desalination system to demonstrate the viability of the technology across various utility areas before the official roll-out of the equipment. In 2023, at agricultural farms in Central Valley, California, SolMem will set up test sites to help siphon the high saline content from the drainage water to create an alternate source for irrigation water supply.

Our solution allows for high freshwater recovery from various utility industry wastewater and natural water sources, we can achieve near zero liquid discharge at low costs and high efficiency

Outside of the US, especially, along the coast and inland areas, drinkable or potable water is a far-fetched theory for many, with community members often traveling miles to collect the resource. In such situations, SolMem’s equipment can be used as an off-grid seawater desalination unit to provide clean drinking water for the small communities present.

Likewise, partnering with the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization for a venture in the Caribbean islands of Antigua and Barbados, SolMem is considering tapping into brackish water sources, and comparing the approach of seawater desalination with cleaning brackish (salty) water for agricultural irrigation.