Everyone knows that water is essential for sustaining life and is of great importance for human health. And we drink fresh water, which is found in rivers, fresh lakes, reservoirs, underground reservoirs (artesian water), clouds, and glaciers. HYDRATICO is a startup that desalinates and purifies water using supercavitation.
According to various sources, more than 40% of the world's population currently suffers from a shortage of drinking water. The water shortage is caused by a combination of factors, including pollution of water bodies by industrial and agricultural waste, as well as repeated salinization of soils. Therefore, seawater desalination is one of the steps to solve the problem. It is about removing salts dissolved in water to make it suitable for drinking or for technical purposes. The salt content in seawater is 3.5%, and in drinking water - 0.05%.
On June 6, 2023, at 2:30 am, the Russian military blew up the Kakhovka HPP. This act of ecocide had a large-scale impact on Ukraine's natural ecosystems. The Kakhovka Reservoir was the second largest reservoir in Ukraine by area and the first by water volume. The destruction of the hydroelectric power plant and dam resulted in the uncontrolled release of a huge volume of water equal to Ukraine's water needs for 2 years. Also, one of the biggest impacts of this disaster is the loss of Ukraine's huge fish stocks.
At the end of August 2024, it became known that the Desna River was polluted. Fish were dying in large numbers, and the water turned black. The pollution began in the Seim River, which is a tributary of the Desna and flows through, among other places, the Kursk region of Russia, where the fighting continues. On September 10, Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said that the Seim River was polluted by emissions from a Russian sugar factory. According to scientists, it will take 2-3 years to restore the Seim and Desna.
So we can see that the problem of clean and fresh water availability in Ukraine is one of the most important today. In the world, many experts believe that the main problems are not even the lack of water on Earth, but rather water pollution, lack of means for its extraction, and expensive desalination of saline water. We spoke with Pavlo Panasyuk, co-founder of the Ukrainian-Polish startup HYDRATICO, who told us about supercavitation technology, modern methods of water purification and desalination, and explained why fresh water should be retained.
What is supercavitation and what is it for?
In order to understand how supercavitation technology works, you first need to understand what cavitation is. This is the formation of cavities inside a liquid filled with gas, steam or a mixture of both (cavitation bubbles), i.e., a violation of the liquid's continuity. Cavitation occurs as a result of a local decrease in pressure in a liquid to a certain critical value, which can occur either by increasing the velocity of the liquid (hydrodynamic cavitation) or by the passage of a high-intensity acoustic wave during the rarefaction half-period (acoustic cavitation).
Supercavitation, in turn, is a fundamental phenomenon inherent in the motion of liquids when sufficiently large cavities appear in them. They are called cavities. The main difference from conventional cavitation is the large size of the cavity and its stable shape.
There are two types of supercavitation: vapor, when the cavity is filled with liquid vapor and occurs due to an increase in liquid velocity; artificial, when the cavity is maintained by blowing gas, such as nitrogen or oxygen.
Supercavitation is used in various fields: high-speed vessels (rocket launchers, hydrofoils), torpedoes and other underwater projectiles, ship propellers, jet engines, and pumps that can be used for water purification and desalination. Pavlo Panasiuk, Chief Operating Officer and co-founder of the Ukrainian-Polish HYDRATICO project, told us that in Ukraine, supercavitation research is being conducted by KPI professor and PhD candidate Oleksandr Machynsky.
"In Kyiv, we met Oleksandr Machynsky and received the first information about this technology from him. It involves the creation of a very long cavity in a water stream, which allows you to effectively either mix substances or, if the liquid is hot, remove steam from the substance. This leads to the effect that the substance can be highly homogenized, i.e., given a homogeneous structure.
We started looking at where this technology could be applied. And one of the implementations already exists in Zhytomyr. At the water utility there, this technology is used to mix wastewater and chemicals that treat it. Thanks to the use of supercavitation, it was possible to reduce the use of expensive chemicals by up to 20%. This was a significant saving. Without much intervention in the overall cleaning process, a good cleaning effect was achieved," Pavlo told us.
After some research, using supercavitation, the startup team began to implement water desalination and chemical wastewater treatment technology. Today, HYDRATICO is already producing its first prototypes and can create equipment for specific customers.
According to the company's COO, supercavitation technology can even be used to cool water: such a system exists at the South Ukrainian NPP, which uses a huge amount of water to cool reactors. As hot water flows through pipes on cooling towers, a huge amount of this water evaporates into the atmosphere, creating irrecoverable losses. Supercavitation, on the other hand, can reduce the temperature of the water before it enters the cooling tower by several degrees, which significantly reduces vaporization and saves water. This saves water, which can be returned to the plant and used again.
"There is a very interesting story with this supercavitation. We also use homogenization of substances, active mixing. One of the applications we are actively testing is the use of supercavitation for the production of organic fertilizers. Ukraine already has production facilities. Certain substances can be extracted from peat to produce a completely clean and environmentally friendly fertilizer, which is essential for agriculture. We all understand that chemical plants are costly. And here, having virtually everything in-house, we can ensure the production of pure organic fertilizers," said Pavlo Panasyuk.
In addition, the United States has the world's first vessel that moves using the supercavitation effect. Juliet Marine Systems, a New Hampshire-based company, created the GHOST boat, which is invisible to enemy radar, more than 10 years ago at the request of the US Navy.
This vessel is more efficient than existing high-speed boats. The company positions it as a hybrid boat-aircraft. The GHOST can carry several tons of various weapons, including torpedoes, and its weapon control systems allow it to track and fire on multiple targets at once.
How the HYDRATICO startup works
The main focus of the HYDRATICO project is currently desalination and water purification. Pavlo explained that this process can take place in two ways. The first method is thermal: the water is heated to a temperature of 60 degrees Celsius, and then, due to hydrodynamic effects and resistance, the temperature rises to 100 degrees or more; there is active evaporation of water and it becomes possible to collect steam and condense it.
The second method is chemical: chemical reagents are injected into cold water flowing through a specially configured device; active mixing of reagents and contaminated water takes place; an accelerated reaction process occurs, after which various contaminants, including salts, precipitate; the precipitate can be collected and the clean water transferred to the next stages of treatment.
"In the first case, when we get pure steam, i.e. distilled water, we cannot drink it. It requires additional treatment. If we use a chemical method, then this water can be brought up to the standards of discharge water. We are talking about water that can be discharged into rivers or used as process water, which is also important, because then we do not use drinking water as process water. It is also possible to irrigate fields with this water," said HYDRATICO's COO.
When it comes to desalination of seawater, after desalination, micro and macro elements and minerals are added to it in the amount that is recorded in the drinking water standard, and it is also treated with ultraviolet light to kill bacteria. According to the startup, the company is currently an element of this chain and does not claim to produce drinkable water, although in theory it can do so.
HYDRATICO has four co-founders. They are two Ukrainians and two EU citizens. The company was founded in March 2022 in Poland, but most of the research and development work is carried out in Kyiv and Dnipro, where there are relevant specialists and institutes. One of the investors in the project was a Polish venture capital fund. Funding is also being raised in Ukraine. The startup already has several clients. These are companies in the chemical and thermal power sectors.
The team is also establishing cooperation with mining companies in Poland, as they have a high threshold for salinity in mine water and simply discharge this water into rivers. For example, in 2022, there was a huge international scandal on the Polish-German border, on the Odra River, when there was a massive fish kill. This was due to mine water discharges.
HYDRATICO has two business models. The first is the sale of equipment. The second is services using such equipment. In this case, water purification is calculated per cubic meter, and 20%-30% less chemicals need to be used, which can already lead to a large economic effect. As for seawater treatment, operating costs are up to 5 kilowatts per 1 cubic meter of water, which is much cheaper than thermal evaporation. All the details are here.
The project has raised almost €220,000 over the course of its existence. "It's not a lot of money for a hardware project. Next year will be a year of implementing the technology, increasing production capacity, and building new, more complex prototypes. This requires an investment of up to one million euros to be fully ready to enter the market and have the technology proven by a customer. In fact, this is a very big story. We do not yet realize the scale of how much water will need to be desalinated. It seems that desalination of seawater is becoming the main source of drinking water in coastal regions," emphasized the company's COO.
Seawater desalination: different experiences
The most common method of seawater desalination is the distillation method. This method is based on boiling and steam generation. The seawater is heated until steam is generated, which is removed and cooled, resulting in water that is suitable for consumption. A huge disadvantage of this method is the residual high concentration of brine. An important point is the purification of seawater before and after distillation.
Another desalination method is reverse osmosis. Water is purified and desalinated using a membrane that is permeable to water but impermeable to salts and other impurities dissolved in seawater, using a water purification and water treatment system. The disadvantage of this method is the small amount of purified desalinated water.
Due to its geographical location, Israel is one of the leaders in desalination. A key solution to increasing water supply in times of scarcity is water reuse. According to some Israeli companies, every drop of water goes through a smart, sophisticated, and sustainable economic cycle, creating synergies between domestic and agricultural use.
"The salt content in the Mediterranean Sea is about 3.8%, while the salt content in the Black Sea is less than 2%. The cost of desalination depends on the amount of salt we have. Ukraine can produce twice as much water with its plant for the same amount of energy that we use in the Mediterranean," explained Professor Raphael Semiat, who has been researching water technologies at the Israel Institute of Technology for more than 40 years. In Israel, they mainly use reverse osmosis technology, which gives a pretty decent result.
And, of course, we cannot fail to mention the aggressor country of Russia, which, despite public statements about the inexpediency of desalination of seawater for water supply in the occupied Crimea, allegedly continued to develop this project in 2021. The contractors were not named at the time to protect them from international sanctions. However, Krym.Realii, a project of Radio Liberty, said that Roscosmos was involved in the process.
A few years ago, a group of researchers from the United States announced that they had managed to improve the technology of reverse osmosis, a method of desalination of seawater. Thanks to the efforts of this group and two American water treatment companies, we have learned more about the properties of semipermeable membranes used in reverse osmosis. In particular, the homogeneity of membranes at the nanoscale plays an important role. Experimentally, the authors of the study managed to achieve 30-40% greater efficiency in the application of reverse osmosis. The study is published in Science.
"Building a network of alternative water supply sources is extremely important for Ukraine. There is an indicator called water retention. This refers to how much water flowing through your territory you retain in reservoirs, in various tanks. It's bad when most of the water that falls as rain simply flows into the sea. We need to store as much water as possible to be able to use it for industrial, agricultural, or other purposes," summarizes Pavlo Panasiuk, co-founder of HYDRATICO.