Dutch desalination innovator Voltea BV announced on 21 February 2012 that it had completed a € 4.5 million funding round to support the commercial rollout of its Capacitive Deionization (CapDI) technology.
The funding came from its existing shareholders, Pentair Inc, Rabo Ventures and Unilever Ventures, as well as from the management team.
The money will be used for a number of activities including the commercialization of two products: treating water in cooling systems; and residential water softening. It will also go towards increasing the production capacity at the facility in Sassenheim, Netherlands.
CapDI, which was featured in an article in D&WR (May/June 2011), is described by Voltea as a simple and innovative way to remove dissolved salts from water with a high recovery rate and low energy consumption.
Cooling water systems: CapDI CT systems have been designed for desalination of make-up water of industrial and institutional cooling systems. The CapDI system desalinates water before it enters the cooling tower allowing the water to remain in the cooling tower up to five times longer. This results in a 20% reduction in water consumption and a 50-75% reduction of the amount of scale and corrosion inhibitors required to treat the water.
Residential water softening: Pentair has developed a water-softening system using the Voltea technology for residential use. This new product will be more environmentally friendly than current ion-exchange systems.
The new POE system with Voltea’s technology is the first system that softens water without using salt. It also produces 90% less wastewater than a conventional whole-house reverse-osmosis system and is very environmentally friendly.