The Los Angeles-based start-up NanoH2O is working on a way to make the process a lot more efficient. The company was founded in late 2005 by Robert Burk, an engineer with extensive experience on water and wastewater projects, and current CEO Jeff Green. It is now ramping up for mass production of a nanocomposite membrane based on technology developed by researchers at UCLA led by Eric Hoek, a professor of civil and environmental engineering. In pilot studies, it has proved nearly twice as productive as existing membranes -- meaning you can get almost twice as much water with the same energy input or the same amount of water for half the energy -- and has the potential to reduce the total expense of desalinated water as much as 25 percent. That would make it a far more attractive proposition for communities looking to diversify their water portfolio.
Unlike traditional RO membranes, which are just filters made of a dense polymer, NanoH2O's polymers interact with "thirsty" nanoparticles to draw in water and repel salt and contaminants as well as the organic materials and bacteria that tend to adhere to conventional membranes and decrease efficiency over time. The technology was an academic research project when Burk and Green, a serial entrepreneur who previously founded the software start-ups Stamps.com and Archive Inc., came across it in their search for a water-related technology to build a company around.
Why water? It's where the action is, Green says. Software, he believes, has largely become commoditized. With water, on the other hand, "core technology and intellectual property are still differentiators," he says. "As an entrepreneur, when you see the scarcity issues, and you see that technology can make a difference and that it's still a little early on the curve, all those factors led to a decision that it would be a good time to start to look into this."
Green and Burk moved quickly to secure the intellectual property through UCLA's tech transfer program and closed a seed round to speed up work. In 2007, the company received $5 million from Khosla Ventures, the clean-tech investment group led by Sun Microsystems co-founder Vinod Khosla. In August, it got $15 million more from Khosla and Oak Investment Partners. Now, with 11 employees and several prototypes being tested in the field, NanoH2O is in the process of shifting from a research and development venture to an operating company, with the goal of bringing a product to market by the end of next year. The market for RO membranes is dominated by big players -- including Dow, General Electric, Koch Industries, and the Japanese companies Nitto Denko and Toray. But Green is unfazed. "As big as Dow or GE are, they don't apply all their energies to reverse osmosis -- if you have the resources to stay independent, you can compete for that segment," he says. "For me as an entrepreneur, it's an exciting place to be."
Desalination, of course, is well and good for communities that are close to the ocean and that can afford relatively expensive water. In the villages of sub-Saharan Africa, that's not the case. Forty-two percent of the region's population lacks access to a safe water supply, and the impact of waterborne diseases on public health is staggering: Of the 396 million cases of malaria every year, the majority are in sub-Saharan Africa; 90 percent of those who die from the disease are children under 5. About 100 million Africans are infected with the parasitic disease schistosomiasis, which kills tens of thousands annually, also mostly children. The death toll from diarrheal diseases is probably much higher. What's more, a lack of reliable, clean water precludes meaningful economic development. By one estimate, some 40 billion hours a year are spent collecting water in sub-Saharan Africa -- or roughly a year's labor for the entire work force of France. The work usually falls to women and children, who are left with little time for things like growing food or going to school.
Moving Water Industries, an 82-year-old, family-owned manufacturer of water pumps based in Deerfield Beach, Florida, has been selling portable pumps for irrigation and flood protection in Nigeria for more than 30 years. But its mission in Africa has taken on a new focus: addressing the problem of safe drinking water in rural villages. The company's solution is the SolarPedalFlo, a solar- and pedal-powered pump that can provide filtered and chlorinated water for thousands of people a day -- three to four times the amount that can be produced from a borehole equipped with a hand pump. Each unit costs about $15,000.
Working with local governments, nongovernmental organizations, and the U.S. Agency for International Development, MWI has been able to install hundreds of the pumps in 12 African countries. The company is just introducing the technology in Central and South America and has one unit installed in the Philippines. With the hopes of speeding adaptation in Africa, it is in discussions with Green WiFi, a U.S.-based volunteer group that is working to install solar-powered Wi-Fi networks in the developing world. Together, the companies would be able to offer a compelling infrastructure two-for-one: clean water and Internet access powered by the same set of solar panels. William Bucknam, MWI's vice president and point man in Africa, hopes that pressure to meet the U.N.'s Millennium Development Goals -- decreasing the number of people without access to safe drinking water by half by 2015 -- will encourage more of the public-private partnerships that will be needed for the technology to spread. "It's a huge problem," he says, "and we believe we have the answer."
