THE HAGUE, 08/02/07 - A consortium led by technology institute TNO has succeeded in cheaply producing fresh water from seawater. The so-called Memstill technology has been successfully tested, as TNO yesterday reported.

"Memstill is a distillation technique that makes use of membranes, a type of ultra fine filters that allow the clean water to evaporate away from the dirty, salty residue liquid. For this process, Memstill makes use of residual industrial heat, a cheap source of energy that is fully available in industrialised countries", as TNO states.

From September to December, a pilot installation in the Rotterdam ports daily produced over 10 cubic metres of drinking water from seawater. The technology, which has been patented, was co-developed by Keppel Seghers, E.on, Evides Industriewater, Watertechnology Holland, Heineken, Waternet and EMF.

TNO estimates that one cubic metre of clean water costs 30 to 40 euro cents in large-scale production. "Herewith, Memstill attains a better score than other state-of-the-art techniques to turn seawater into fresh water, such as reverse osmosis, multi-effect distillation and multistage flashing. The lowest reported costs for these techniques are between 0,50 to 1,80 euros. In addition, Memstill is compact, does not make use of chemicals and thanks to the use of waste heat, barely adds to the production of greenhouse gases".

TNO believes Memstill could play a crucial role in the supply of fresh water worldwide. The development of the technique has been ongoing since 1998. TNO Memstill also conducted a pilot in Singapore.