Three companies are leveraging modern technology to reshape the future of commercial desalination, making the process cleaner, smarter, and more cost-effective, the Wall Street Journal reported. 

Safe drinking water helps prevent the transmission of preventable diseases like "cholera, diarrhoea, dysentery, hepatitis A, typhoid, and polio," per the World Health Organization.  Yet, more than four billion people in 135 low- and middle-income countries across the world lack that, according to a 2024 study published in the journal Science.

Access to fresh drinking water is shrinking as global water usage increases, driven by industries like agriculture and new technology like artificial intelligence.

Desalination appears to be the most logical solution since 97% of the Earth's water is found in the ocean. 

However, traditional commercial desalination methods like thermal desalination and reverse osmosis are highly energy-intensive and expensive. 

Seawater reverse osmosis requires significant energy to pressurize water that passes through a semi-permeable membrane. This membrane filters out salt and impurities, allowing only water molecules to pass through. This process creates a concentrated brine byproduct that can harm aquatic life when deposited back into the ocean. 

Thermal desalination leverages heat energy to remove salt from the water. The process involves heating the water to produce steam, which naturally separates from the salt and minerals, and turns back into fresh water when the steam has cooled. Thermal desalination also requires a lot of energy to heat water at scale. 

Dirty fossil fuels power these methods, and they remain expensive compared to alternative methods of harvesting freshwater. 

Flocean, Waterise, and OceanWell are three water desalination companies that are thinking outside the box. 

Instead of wasting energy to pressurize the water to pass through filter membranes, could the desalination process harness the ocean's natural water pressure to do the same thing? 

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By using deep-sea technology, including deep-sea robots and undersea power cables, and submerging the filter membrane to a depth of at least 400 meters, or 1312 feet, the water pressure at that depth will naturally flow through the desalination membrane. According to the Wall Street Journal, this deep water desalination process can save up to 40% on energy usage. 

In addition to the benefits of working at that depth, the harmful brine byproduct the process creates can be dispersed quickly back into the ocean, minimizing harm to aquatic life. 

Flocean and Waterise have established their pilot desalination plants off the coast of Norway, and OceanWell has built its plant at a reservoir in California's Las Virgenes Municipal Water District, per the Wall Street Journal. 

These companies are seeking government contracts that will help further develop and make more accessible this cleaner, desalination process. 

Currently, Flocean is supplying ultra-pure water to a local Norwegian company to make premium-craft cocktail ice. The company also has a contract with Mongstad, an oil refinery facility, to produce about 264,000 gallons of desalinated water per day, expected to launch by the second half of 2026. 

Waterise has entered a contract with Jordan Phosphates Mines, a mining company based in Jordan, agreeing to supply 6.6 million gallons of desalinated water per day from the Gulf of Aqaba, south of Jordan.

Most commenters seemed intrigued and hopeful about this new desalination process. However, others questioned the logistics behind the process. 

"But they still need to pump that fresh water from the depths to wherever it's going on land so it's hard to see where significant energy savings comes from," one commenter pointed out.

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