Oasys Water Inc.

Jim Matheson,
President and Chief Executive Officer 

Location: Massachusetts, USA
Number of employees: 26
Year founded: 2009

Oasys Water Inc.
21 Drydock Avenue, 7th Floor
Boston, MA 02210
USA

Website: www.oasyswater.com

The world faces severe fresh water shortages, largely from the growth in industrial and extractive processes that require – and contaminate – large amounts of water. This contaminated water is often dumped, polluting the environment. It is possible, and sometimes legally required, to treat this water for discharge or reuse; but the primary solution is boiling it, which is costly and requires the burning of fossil fuels.

Oasys Water is poised to change that. Its system uses significantly less energy to treat contaminated water, making it feasible to use renewable sources such as solar and geothermal or even waste heat generated by the processes that cause the contamination.

The system works on the principle of osmosis, whereby water flows from a state of lower to higher concentration. Oasys has produced a proprietary “draw solution” that causes water to flow across a specially-designed membrane that filters out contaminants; the draw solution is then vaporized at temperatures as low as 60-70 degrees, leaving behind clean water.

In tests with water contaminated by use in fracturing a shale gas well, Oasys’s system used as much as 60% less energy than traditional treatment methods to produce water clean enough to drink – although it is more likely that treated water will be reused in industry or to replenish aquifers.

Oasys’s system also offers a much more efficient way of desalinating seawater, as it uses less energy and can cope with much higher concentrations of salt. It can be used in new desalination plants or added as a second phase to existing desalination plants, approximately doubling their output.