EWM Seawater Full Recovery Desalination® -- Preserves Ocean Habitats

Full Recovery Desalination® of seawater is a global opportunity. Demand for EWM’s Full Recovery Desalination® technology is highest in arid regions of the world that have access to seawater. These areas also correspond to high value solar resource regions, allowing EWM to apply its PV based green energy system.

Three barriers to seawater desalination acceptance include:

• The high cost of the desalinated water.
•  The risk of environmental damage to sensitive seawater shoreline zones from intake and brine discharge.
• The high energy cost and associated CO2 emissions.

EWM's technology solves all of these issues.

Extracting the minerals and chemicals from the desalinated water using EWM’s Full Recovery Desalination® technology allows the plant owner to set a low price (or even zero price) for the water, if so desired, because the profitability generated from the mineral and chemical sales can subsidize the cost of water. As an integrated system, the water can be considered a byproduct of the mineral and chemical production.

The EWM Full Recovery Desalination® seawater process does not produce a waste brine stream during normal plant operation.  The construction and commissioning sequence is arranged so that the downstream units are constructed and commissioned first in recycle mode using purchased salts, minerals and fresh water. Feed seawater is introduced to the plant only after all the downstream systems are fully operational in recycle mode. This minimizes the use of the recycle seawater tanks allowing them to have a less than 12-hour intake seawater volume. This operating philosophy is similar to chemical plants and refineries that cannot discharge offspec products to the ocean.