Global water stress currently impacts 40% of the world's population and is even worsening due to climate change. To counteract the devastating consequences, membrane desalination is exponentially booming with over 22,000 plants already operational in 2022. Although membrane desalination has lower energy requirements as compared to thermal processes, membrane fouling significantly jeopardizes the efficiency of these plants worldwide. It results in higher energy consumption and requires frequent, at times aggressive, cleaning cycles. The latter in turn increase process downtimes and expenditure on cleaning agents while drastically reducing membrane lifetime. The consequence is significant economic losses for operators, a detrimental environmental impact and an increased final price of the drinking water produced. Currently, there exist only corrective measures which are entirely insufficient as they are based on indirect measurements. The objective of our sensor system Excalibur (patent granted in the EU) is to detect fouling and cleaning at nano levels directly on a membrane in real-time and non-invasively. This enables a truly predictive process monitoring. Excalibur will surpass existing sensitivity limits by three orders of magnitude and its proprietary AI-based software will provide unique and hitherto unattainable operational flexibility with a strong impact on running costs: membrane lifespan is prolonged up to 20%, process downtimes are reduced up to 60%. By optimizing the use of chemical agents, Excalibur will also enhance the sustainability of membrane processes. It will boost both energy savings (>10%) as well as economic efficiency (decrease cleaning cost by 25%). According to our projections and B2B business model, we anticipate installing our solution in over 666 desalination plants (producing an estimated 25 million m3/day of water) until 2030, ensuring energy-efficient plant productivity and minimizing their environmental impact.
