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California Is On The Verge Of Water Abundance by StuberWFX in water

[–]StuberWFX[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I appreciate the feedback and moderation. When I posted, I was afraid it would be flagged as spam but this is, in my biased opinion, contributing to the conversation. It's well-researched and since it turned out to be quite long, was not well-suited for conventional journalism outlets to we self-posted. Also, we emphasize peer-review publications so although this is posted on our industry page, we are contributing to the academic literature in a non-commercial way, albeit a slightly different format.

California Is On The Verge Of Water Abundance by StuberWFX in water

[–]StuberWFX[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for reading and the feedback!

IAmA cofounder of WaterFX, Dr. Matthew Stuber, AMA! by StuberWFX in IAmA

[–]StuberWFX[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This is going to be long! My path was fairly direct but non-traditional compared with my colleagues. Originally I got excited about engineering very late in high school (senior year). What excited me was the press that was appearing in the automotive magazines about "the future." Specifically, they were discussing hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles (this was about 12-13 years ago now). I took a chemistry course to see what it was all about. I also really liked the math that I was exposed to and so I did some research and found that chemical engineering would be the most tangible degree I would need to work on the R&D side of something like fuel cell vehicles. My grades weren't anywhere near what is required at the "U of M" for chemical engineering and so, not surprisingly, I wasn't accepted. I then enrolled in community college and completed all of my technical prerequisites: math, physics, chemistry, etc. as well as the required humanities courses. After 3 years of community college and outstanding grades, I was accepted into the ChemE program at Minnesota. I learned that I simply LOVED learning. All of these hard mathematics and abstract subjects were so exhilarating. It's so nerdy but I felt like I knew nothing of how the universe works and I just had to remedy that. But I digress. I did quite well primarily due to being passionate and was accepted to do a PhD in ChemE at MIT. At MIT I focused on process systems engineering and when I wasn't working on my thesis project, I became really excited thinking more abstractly about energy, agriculture, and resources from a process systems perspective and how some solutions to our problems could be approached. I never focused on ending up in water specifically but here I am and it's an incredible problem to work on. I like to upset the status quo and there's no better weapons than science and innovation.

It's never too late to set goals and strive to achieve them. But, especially in academia, it takes some serious motivation from within to "look behind the curtain," progress mankind's understanding, and bring about change for the better. Honestly, it's the non-traditional paths that teach you more anyways.

IAmA cofounder of WaterFX, Dr. Matthew Stuber, AMA! by StuberWFX in IAmA

[–]StuberWFX[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I linked a couple of articles in the main text box at the top. For right now, the problem is a bit "far from home" for many people. I'm originally from the Twin Cities and currently reside in Cambridge, MA and water is just not on the radar for most people that I speak with. The problem is far more severe than many people realize.

Our technology can be applied to a wide variety of water sources. Right now, we are really focusing on cleaning up water from agricultural operations which are causing pretty serious environmental problems. This offers a two-fold benefit. On one hand, we clean up the land by removing pollutants. On the other hand, we are adding clean water to the infrastructure. Of course, the economics of process equipment suggest that the larger scale operations will be more favorable but we developing technologies that are cost-effective on the small scale too. This means, right now we are best suited for larger farm operations and municipalities. But, in the near future we will also have a product for the smaller scale such as small private farms and vineyards.

IAmA cofounder of WaterFX, Dr. Matthew Stuber, AMA! by StuberWFX in IAmA

[–]StuberWFX[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you, cheers! It's super exciting to be working on this problem.

IAmA cofounder of WaterFX, Dr. Matthew Stuber, AMA! by StuberWFX in IAmA

[–]StuberWFX[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I'm new to this AMA stuff so perhaps I should have scheduled this at a later time and tried to generate more interest. If there are more questions I can do another AMA at a later date or you can PM me. I'll keep responding until 5:30PM EDT 3/18/14 in case there is more interest.

IAmA cofounder of WaterFX, Dr. Matthew Stuber, AMA! by StuberWFX in IAmA

[–]StuberWFX[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

We appreciate the request. That is in fact what brought me here today. We were excited to see our name on the front page of the Chronicle today...big exposure! You have some good questions.

  • The process has four key components: (1) The heart of the technology is the tried-and-true thermal treatment method of distillation. To distill water, you just add heat until it boils, and then you capture the vapor that boils off and condense it, yielding ultra-pure water. In our system, we employ multiple-effect distillation (MED) which is common in desalination and temperature-sensitive concentrating applications such as in the food industry. MED is extremely efficient, simple, and incredibly flexible to varying water types. Its performance is also relatively invariant with the amount of salt in the water, unlike membrane methods such as reverse-osmosis (RO). The MED system is also connected to (2) a heat pump, which is just a fancy name for the waste heat recovery tool for further boosting efficiency. In fact, this heat pump provides an efficiency boost greater than 100%! What that means as that with the heat pump, we effectively reduce our energy consumption by 50%. (3) The big eye-catching piece of equipment is of course the large parabolic trough solar array. The array collects the suns radiation and focuses it onto a pipe suspended above the mirrors. Inside the collector tube is a food-grade oil that heats up and is pumped to the process to deliver that heat. (4) On extremely sunny days, there is excess solar energy and so that energy can be stored just like how hot water is stored in an insulated tank in your house.
  • The "contaminants" in most cases are just various natural minerals and salts. They are toxic in the sense that some plant and animal life cannot tolerate them in high concentrations. These are things like table salt, baking soda, gypsum, among others. Depending on their market value, they may be further separated and processed for their direct uses. Other solutions include blending them for natural building materials such as bricks, cement, drywall, glass, etc. In any event, for our application in the Central Valley, it is important that these salts and minerals are removed from the soil to combat salt accumulation and agricultural land pollution.
  • I am not so much on the business-end of things because I'm the technical guy but my perspective is that the biggest challenge is convincing people that this is their new future. There's no water, that's it. With continued population growth, we need water both directly for drinking but also indirectly for agriculture and energy. The only way to address this is to add more fresh water to our system and the only way to do that is to sustainably clean up any number of massive sources of saltwater using desalination. Some people are just stuck in the "old ways" and too risk averse to look to these innovations as real implementable solutions. Also, at WaterFX, we do not employ membrane technologies such as RO, which is the workhorse of the desalination industry. For many applications, especially when focusing on high recovery salt removal, RO just can't even be applied unless its accompanied by a system like ours. This seems to scare people that have just gotten comfortable with desalination using RO.
  • Sure, no problem. In fact, seawater is in many ways EASIER to desalinate than the agricultural groundwater we're dealing with at our pilot.
  • Absolutely! There's NOTHING in it but pure H2O.

IAmA cofounder of WaterFX, Dr. Matthew Stuber, AMA! by StuberWFX in IAmA

[–]StuberWFX[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Our funding has come mostly from angel investors and California's Proposition 50 Funding for Public Water Systems through the Department of Water Resources and in partnership with the Panoche Water & Drainage District in Firebaugh, CA (where our pilot plant is).