Frisian company Salttech wins award in Abu Dhabi
Water technology company Salttech, a member of the Water Alliance, won the Innovate@IWS innovation award in Abu Dhabi. Following a Dragon’s Den style competition—during which Salttech’s Gerard Schouten gave a presentation to a jury of experts, primarily from the Middle East—the Frisian company won the Industrial category award at the International Water Summit. “It’s a huge boost and a confirmation of the power of innovation at Dutch water technology companies”, says Hein Molenkamp, present at the International Water Summit (part of the Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week) on behalf of the Water Alliance and the Dutch water technology sector. “Salttech has a smart innovation with great potential worldwide. It is obviously becoming popular, as the company has won awards with it before. We think it could be used in many different industries.”
The innovation at the heart of all this is Salttech’s DyVaR technology. It can be used to desalinate water without the use of membranes. DyVaR technology uses the natural scaling process to desalinate water, as Gerard Schouten previously explained to WaterProof magazine. “Our idea was to base the entire desalination process on scale formation. Each DyVaR system consists of a large number of plastic, bucket-sized units. Salt water is injected along the inside of the units in a way that causes the water to swirl. The fresh water then forms a vapour which is extracted from the centre of the unit through the top. The high centrifugal forces in the unit simultaneously force the salt particles outwards. The salt is extracted through the bottom of the unit. With this technology, we can desalinate water without the use of a membrane. Also remarkable is that we can recover nearly all salt combinations, with almost no loss of fresh water.”
The first DyVaR plants have been in operation for a few years now, primarily in North America. Initially, Salttech saw the most commercial opportunities in the oil and gas industry, where a lot of salt is produced as a byproduct. Entrepreneur Schouten has now set his sights further: “There is a broad range of applications. We are thinking of the process and chemical industries, for instance, as well as the water sector, where our DyVaR technology could be used for applications such as treating waste streams resulting from the production of drinking water.
Founded in 2011, Salttech began on the WaterCampus in Leeuwarden. We used the various facilities and support programs at the WaterCampus to develop and upscale our technology. The technology has been tested extensively at one of the demo sites, the desalination demo site Wetsalt. The company is now located in Sneek and also has a branch in Texas.
Pictured, from left to right: Hein Molenkamp (Director of Water Alliance), Piers Clark (Isle Utilities, organiser of the Innovate@IWS program) and Gerard Schouten (CEO of Salttech).
