July 2016, Agua Via’s first water membrane from Covalent becomes the featured image on the splash page for the Department of Energy Advanced Manufacturing Office website. “The most atomically precise material ever built.”
June 2016, Covalent requested to present the membranes at the Department of Energy’s Advanced Manufacturing Peer Review
April 2016, DOE awarded Covalent SBIR Phase 2 Grant for scale-up of membrane manufacturing.
March 2016, Agua Via attends the 2016 White House Water Summit, one of only two companies invited.
January 2016, Agua Via invited to US President’s Office of Management & Budget small strategy group to advise on national water strategy.
December 2015, Agua Via invited to attend the US President’s White House Roundtable on Water Innovation.
March 2016, first commercial contract signed to deliver 45,000Acre Feet of water per year in California
December 2015, US National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded Covalent an SBIR Phase 1 Grant for development of a commercial-scale, real time Quality Assurance system for membrane manufacturing.
February 2015, US Department of Energy (DOE) awarded Covalent SBIR Phase 1 Grant for development of commercial-scale, massively parallel membrane manufacturing.
Artemis, Going Green, ImagineH2O
From the US National Science Foundation
The broader impact of this technology is, of course, astounding.
Such a technology can make the polluted feed stocks which are now off limits as impossible or too costly to clean usable.
From the US Department of Energy
The Breakthrough That Has Been Expected for Membrane Technology.
Transformative technology that can revolutionize the water applications across all market segments. This membrane offers a long list of key benefits which would be compelling under normal business circumstances, e.g., small footprint, higher yield, and reduced fouling.
The water industry can benefit from the low energy use possibility; and the selectivity needed to deal with seawater or highly comprised feedstocks, which are an increasingly important water resource in the future.
The impact of this technology is enormous. The era of cheap water is over and we need better ways to purify water that use as little energy as possible. The approach of synthesizing membranes that have the ultimate density of size selective pores is the best approach possible. Membrane filtration requires the lowest energy outlay of all approaches. This is water, and after all, a basic human need.
“This will have a great impact on the water desalination process in the next decade.” This is clearly a high impact when compared to the RO techniques that are used. They require high pressure and are inefficient, as the RO layers tend to develop fouling. US Department of Energy, SBIR Phase II Award Review 2016
Covalent will develop a one atomic-layer-thick membranes sufficient to provide for a large percentage of the world’s water purification and desalination needs using advanced manufacturing techniques to lay this membrane that prevent holes from forming for fouling to start. The thin film and membrane manufacturing and assembly will prevent this. US Department of Energy, SBIR Phase II Award Review 2016
There has been a tremendous amount of excitement generated in the past couple of months in the development of nanoporous graphene for water filtration. This has resulted in many news stories in the popular press and Lockheed Martin has obtained a patent in this area and is developing it as a water purification technology. Nanoporous graphene has tremendous challenges in terms of scalability and control of pore size. Even if these problems were to be solved, the pore density of the approach described in this Phase II proposal is far superior in terms of pore density. Nanoporous graphene will never achieve the pore density of covalently linked pore forming macromolecules. US Department of Energy, SBIR Phase II Award Review 2016
“These membranes are a better alternative to much-publicized graphene.” – US National Science Foundation, SBIR Award Review