Aim is to lower industry standard of energy requirement for desalination
Vancouver, B.C., May 4, 2021 – Desalination has traditionally been viewed as a reliable though expensive means to produce fresh water in water scarce regions. Aquatech International, a global desalination leader, has partnered with Pani Energy, an artificial intelligence (AI) analytics solution provider for water applications, to reduce the energy and cost associated with desalination, thereby encouraging further adoption of desalination solutions and addressing water security issues.
The partnership aims to augment Aquatech’s proprietary LoWatt® membrane desalination process with Pani’s artificial intelligence platform to reduce the energy required for desalination to levels that have not been achievable using existing approaches.
LoWatt is a low energy desalination process that integrates robust pretreatment, optimized reverse osmosis design, and a proprietary cleaning mechanism to deliver what is currently the lowest specific energy consumption of reverse osmosis-based desalination. LoWatt’s performance already betters the current industry standard and offers additional advantages including higher reliability and better plant uptime, thus reducing the overall cost of desalination. The integration of Pani’s software solution will help Aquatech further lower the energy consumption and establish a new industry standard of 2.7 kWh per cubic meter (m3). Enabling this lower energy consumption is expected to increase adoption of desalination in water scarce regions.
Desalination plays a critical part of solving water security issues. Over 20,000 desalination facilities worldwide treat over 99 million m3 of water per day – which equals more than 26 billion US liquid gallons or almost 40,000 Olympic swimming pools – providing water for more than 300 million people globally.
While many more water scarce regions stand to benefit from desalination technologies, high energy requirements and costs have limited adoption, as energy alone can account for more than 50% of a desalination plant’s operating cost. Artificial intelligence technologies such as Pani’s AI Coach™ promise to bring greater efficiencies to current technologies, making desalination an affordable and robust option to meet the fresh water needs of many water scarce regions around the globe.
“By leveraging existing data, systems, and people paired with machine learning techniques, current desalination technologies can be lifted to new standards of efficiency – making water less expensive to produce and delivering affordable, climate resilient water to people and communities in water stressed regions,” said Pani CEO, Devesh Bharadwaj.
“With superior process design combined with advanced machine learning, Aquatech can provide a solution that reliably meets treatment goals while minimizing energy consumption and O&M requirements in real-time. Aquatech is proud to welcome Pani as our official digital partner for LoWatt. This partnership enables us to better serve our customers and address the biggest pain points of desalination – energy consumption and biofouling,” noted Ravi Chidambaran, Aquatech’s Chief Operating Officer.
About Pani
Pani is an industry pioneer in advanced computational solutions for water treatment infrastructures. Pani provides a cloud-based machine learning software platform, AI Coach™ to elevate the efficiency of industrial and city scale water treatment infrastructures.
About Aquatech
Aquatech is a global leader in water technology and services for industrial and infrastructure markets. With a focus on solving water scarcity through desalination, water reuse, and zero liquid discharge (ZLD), Aquatech has executed over 2,000 projects across 60 countries. Leveraging the experience and knowhow gained over 40 years handling some of the most difficult to treat waters, Aquatech helps some of the world’s most recognized companies reduce their water and carbon footprint, ultimately reducing water risk. For more Aquatech news and information, visit www.aquatech.com.
Media Contacts:
For Aquatech For Pani
Ann Seamonds Devesh Bharadwaj
+1-978-764-5528 +1-250-294-7854
seamonds@seamonds.com devesh@panienergy.com