History of Subsea Reverse Osmosis

When we began looking into deepwater desalination, we quickly learned that the primary challenges do not lie with the desalination process. Hydrostatic power-driven reverse osmosis is disclosed in patents issued to Lopez Fernand in 1980. Subsea desalination was piloted in the late 1990s by a team of researchers in Italy led by Paolo Pacenti, with the European Commission. More recently, a team in China led by Yifan Cui from Hainan University piloted a “turbine based energy recovery scheme” for a reverse osmosis system designed to operate at 1100 meters and provide freshwater to China’s proposed Deep Sea Space Station. 

GE Water & Process Technologies (now Suez), Siemens, and IDE investigated subsea desalination using methods of DXV Water Technologies. Efforts were abandoned when confronted with the economics of subsea implementation and operation such as the cost of specialized vessels and cranes for installation, required for their approach, equipment recovery for maintenance and removal, regulatory costs, and how to deal with silt and biofouling.