If someone told you a New Mexico company recently had a presence in Saudi Arabia, your mind might jump to the state's large oil and gas industry. A startup with an innovative way to desalinate water would probably be a bit lower in consideration.
But that was just the case when Syed Shah, the chief operating officer for Aqua Membranes, traveled to Jeddah, on Saudi Arabia's western coast, to accept an innovation award on behalf of the Albuquerque company and meet with health and infrastructure leaders in the Middle Eastern country.
Aqua Membranes, headquartered at 5601 Midway Park Place NE, earned the Global Prize for Innovation in Desalination in late September. The event was hosted by Saudi Arabia's Minister of Environment, Water and Agriculture and the Governor of the Saline Water Conversion Corp.
Why would Aqua Membranes be selected for such a prize? It's because the startup, established in 2011, has developed a unique way to produce semi-permeable membranes used for reverse osmosis, an advanced water purification process, by replacing mesh spacers in reverse osmosis elements with 3D-printed spacers.
The startup uses 3D printing techniques to make spacers used in wax membranes, which are then rolled up to create reverse osmosis elements. Those tubular elements come in different lengths and diameters for different applications, ranging from single-family residences to large industrial plants.
Rodney Herrington, Aqua Membranes' founder, told Albuquerque Business First the startup's reverse osmosis elements are more efficient than other reverse osmosis technologies.
That's because the startup's 3D printing technique creates thinner membrane spacers that, in turn, mean less pressure is required to push water through the tubular elements for purification. And, Aqua Membrane's elements contain up to 40% more membranes than alternatives, in terms of surface area.
The same amount of water can thus be purified with the startup's elements using less energy, Herrington said. Aqua Membranes demonstrated its 3D printing technology early on in its development in collaboration with Sandia National Laboratories, he added.
Aqua Membranes makes its water desalination elements at a roughly 11,000-square-foot production facility. Herrington said the startup can currently make up to 50 elements per day — nowhere near enough to meet the demand the company has seen for its products, he said.
Take a look inside Aqua Membranes' production facility in the gallery at the top of the page.
The startup employs 12 people, but because of that demand, which could continue to grow thanks to its recent award recognition and more industries turning to reverse osmosis, Herrington and Shah envision rapid growth on the horizon.
Shah said Aqua Membranes could grow to around 150 employees in 2025. To accommodate those new staff, the startup would also need a much larger facility, Herrington added.
Herrington said the startup is beginning to look for a new factory location, which he said could be 60,000 square feet or larger. The startup moved into its current facility in 2018, the same year it brought on Craig Beckman as CEO.
Three years later, Aqua Membranes struck an investment deal with Micron Technology, a large semiconductor company. Through that deal, Micron helped demonstrate Aqua Membranes' reverse osmosis elements in its semiconductor fabrication plants.
That demonstration showed an approximate 20% energy savings when compared to existing elements, Herrington said.
Aqua Membranes has pulled in other investments from firms including Clean Energy Ventures and Pentair. Herrington said future funding rounds could soon raise more money in order to fuel its expected expansion of the next several years.
