Monday, February 16, 2009

Oasys Water gains $10M for desalination

By Mass High Tech staff

Oasys Water Inc. of Cambridge has landed $10 million from venture capital firms to fund the development of a desalination process that uses 90 percent less energy than existing methods, company officals said. The process would convert salt water into drinking water using reverse osmosis, and save on the cost of electricity to produce clean water.

VC funding, which will support the two-year development of a 1,000 to 5,000 cubic meter treatment daily, was led by Flagship Ventures, Advanced Technology Ventures and Draper Fisher Jurvetson.

The company said it expects its desalination technology to cost about 30 cents to 50 cents per cubic meter of water -- about half the amount of existing processes, which the Boston Globe reports as costing between 90 cents and $1 per cubic meter of water.