Seawards, a company based in Marseilles, has developed a solution for desalinating seawater to benefit as many people as possible. It has developed a new technique, cryoseparation, which is less energy-intensive and more environmentally friendly than the one generally used today. Its first factory prototype is expected this year.
In France, the particularly severe drought of recent years has put the spotlight on the inevitable future drying-up of water resources. Yet it’s a reality already experienced by almost a quarter of the world’s population: two billion people currently have no access to drinking water, as the United Nations (UN) often reminds us. And 25 countries are exposed to extremely high water stress every year, according to the environmental NGO World Resources Institute. In other words, they consume more than 80% of their renewable water resources in a single year.
Solutions to prevent the situation from worsening include saving, reusing and desalinating water. That’s what Marseille-based Seawards is all about. “Our raison d’être is to democratize desalination and make it accessible to as many people as possible, in order to provide an answer to the world’s water problem”, explains Hervé de Lanversin, co-founder of this start-up with Hubert Montcoudiol. With two promises: to do so without harming the environment, and to keep production costs to a minimum.