Desalitech pioneered a brand new approach to reverse osmosis desalination by implicating closed circuit desalination based on hydrostatic principles.

These principles enable a process in which the flow rates of pressurized feed and permeate are equal, thereby, substantially reducing the capacity of the pressurizing means and avoiding any need for energy recovery techniques.

The closed circuit hydrostatic desalination scheme, which utilizes only standard off the shelf components in full compliance to their manufacturers’ recommendations, offer noteworthy benefits and advantages over existing reverse osmosis methods, including: 

• Attainment of any desired recovery level, irrespective of the number of elements per module or the number of modules, and without exceeding the specifications of the membrane elements. This allows us demonstrate brackish water desalination at 94% with only 3 membranes. 
• Dramatically reduced energy demand. Variable pressure decouples driving pressure and overall process recovery, facilitating reduction of more than 50% of the energy consumption of the RO process. This allows us to demonstrate sea water desalination at 50% recovery with energy consumption below 1.5 KWh/m3.
• Simple and scalable designs that are equally effective for any production capacity magnitude, including low production rates for which existing reverse osmosis solution are not economically viable.
• Very high average element flow, thereby substantially reducing the amount of required membrane elements for a given production capacity.
• Reduced fouling and bio-fouling of elements.
• Higher quality permeates.
• Lower costs of operation and maintenance.

This new approach has been expended to cover various cost effective methods for continuous closed circuit desalination and filtration, which constitute the extensive intellectual property portfolio of the company.