The first desalination plant to employ Manipulated Osmotic Technology (MOT) has produced its first water in Gibraltar. Modern Water, the UK company that installed the plant, also announced on 15 September that it has an agreement to install another MOT plant in Oman.
The Al Khaluf proving plant will be installed alongside an existing desalination plant (as is the Gibraltar plant), allowing Modern Water to demonstrate technology next to traditional methods.
The MOT technology is derived from original research conducted by the Centre for Osmosis Research and Applications (CORA) at the University of Surrey, UK. This process claims a significant reduction in capital and operating costs, but Modern Water is refusing to release any information about the process.
CORA says that the invention promises to overcome most of the practical difficulties in conventional RO desalination process (scaling, chemical treatment, fouling and high power consumption) and give higher throughput (5-10 times higher than RO, and high quality of final product) with minimum environmental impact (minimal chemical additives and no rejection of waste stream) and lower energy consumption (30-60% less than RO.