Offshore wave powered desalination: competitive freshwater production

Driven by population growth, climate change and depletion of natural freshwater resources, water scarcity is an increasing problem in all continents. Seawater desalination is an important part of the solution.
Global production of fresh water by desalination is expected to grow from 120 million m3/day in 2022 through to 250 million m3/day by 2030. However, traditional large-scale plants face critical constraints, such as reliance on fossil fuel, land use, nearshore brine discharge and limited flexibility.

Ocean Oasis delivers fresh water using wave power as the only energy source, providing an energy-secure, scalable and cost-effective solution to water scarcity with minimal environmental impact. Our innovative desalination buoys help existing desalination plants to increase production capacity using a flexible, modular solution without expanding the physical and environmental footprint, and reducing reliance on grid power or fossil fuels.

Our commitment to sustainability

Our experienced team, leaning on decades of experience from the Norwegian offshore industry, has developed a solution for sustainable desalination. Our robust design is engineered for durability and efficiency in an offshore environment, providing an autonomous, low-maintenance desalination buoy with remote monitoring and control.The buoy requires no external power and is emission free, helping to contribute to climate goals. The onboard desalination takes place without use of chemicals ensuring sustainable water production. Brine is discharged near the surface in deep water, eliminating the harm to coastal and offshore marine ecosystems. Desalinated water is fed to the shore via seabed pipelines, minimizing the footprint.

Our commitment to sustainability

Our experienced team has developed a proven solution for sustainable desalination. Our robust offshore design is engineered for durability and efficiency in a marine environment, bringing together an autonomous, low-maintenance operation with remote monitoring and control. By eliminating a reliance on the grid, or fossil fuels, there is no need for an external energy source. Our wave powered desalination solution generates zero emissions, helping to contribute to climate goals. The onboard desalination plant is a chemical-free process that leads to sustainable water production. With offshore brine discharge, it prevents harm to coastal marine ecosystems. Desalinated water is fed to the shore via seabed pipelines, helping to minimize the footprint.

Our solution: wave energy desalination

Seawater desalination is an energy intensive process typically requiring 3 kWh per m³ produced fresh water. Our desalination buoys use wave power directly to drive the desalination process without going via electricity production providing cost efficient desalination. Depending on the wave conditions, a single buoy will produce between 500 m³ and 2000 m³ fresh water per day.

Easily adjusted to meet increasing demand, an Ocean Oasis fleet of several desalination buoys provide industrial-scale, clean water.

Our wave-powered sea water desalination technology has been proven through successful testing of a full-scale pilot buoy, ‘Gaia’, in Gran Canaria. The Canary Islands beachhead market is the largest market in the European economy with a current capacity of 180 M m³/year and growing rapidly.

The cost of sea water desalination

Historically, seawater desalination has been expensive compared with other freshwater sources. With increasing water scarcity and advances in membrane technology over the last 50 years, however, sea water desalination has become an important part of the solution for domestic use and increasingly for industrial and agricultural use.

Our business model is to build, own and operate to sell water through long-term contracts over 10 to 25 years. Ocean Oasis provides a competitive solution in regions where water stress coincides with a significant wave resource. Using the Ocean Oasis technology, we can deliver fresh water to shore at a cost below 1.0 €/m³ in the Canary Islands and 0.5 €/m³ in South Africa or Australia.

Milestones reached

Since incorporation in 2020, Ocean Oasis has matured the technology, successfully demonstrated a full-scale pilot in an offshore environment, secured € 10m+ in grants, welcomed the public water utility of Gran Canaria as first customer, and built a strong local consortium for our first-of-a-kind offshore water farm.