WH2Osystems is a water-technology company based in the Silicon Valley. Our team is composed of award-winning engineers who developed the most advanced wastewater treatment systems for use in outer space. At WH2Osytems we applied all the lessons learned in decades of human space exploration to develop the most compact, most reliable and most cost-effective solution for decentralized water recycling here on Earth. Leveraging our unique expertise in a wide portfolio of technologies, we developed a physio-chemical system that can treat all the different wastewater sources normally available at commercial and residential buildings (greywater, black-water, stormwater, rainwater) and that achieves the highest water quality and water recovery rate while minimizing footprint, energy consumption, and O&M costs.
WH2Osystems’s Forward Osmosis Recycling System (FORS) exploits a physical phenomenon that has been present in nature for millions of years. Forward osmosis is driven by an osmotic pressure gradient (not to be confused with hydraulic pressure applied in reverse osmosis) that enables the selective extraction of water molecules while rejecting solutes and contaminants. The first patents related to the use of forward osmosis in wastewater treatment are from the ’60. However, it is only thanks to the advancements made in material science by the aerospace industry during the last few years that the development of forward osmosis membranes for commercial applications became possible.
WH2Osystems has already deployed FORS at multiple domestic and international sites, including the first and longest operating greywater system in California (since 2013). The reclaimed water is used for landscape irrigation, facility cleaning, cooling towers, and toilet/urinal flushing. In some cases, depending on the geographical area, the cost of the effluent produced by FORS is lower than the cost of water and sewer provided by local municipal utilities. FORS is engineered to be remotely controlled and fully automated, and it integrates optional diagnosis and prognosis algorithms for predictive fault identification. If needed, WH2Osystems also offers post treatment options to meet legal potable standards and zero liquid discharge (ZLD) solutions that allow the user to be completely independent from water and sewer pipelines.
