Hard to believe the summer is nearly over. We spent the first half of the summer commissioning our first two 2025 pilots. Much of the second half has been spent on design of our upcoming pilots. Finally, with the arrival of our Gemini frames, we are back to building.

Gemini is one of our BoR-funded pilots. We are sending two identical skids to southern California to treat produced water. Both skids will use our batch RO process but one will use regular RO membranes and the other will use Active Membranes. We will assess the effectiveness of combining our anti-scaling batch process with Active’s anti-scaling elements. Treatment of produced water is a promising commercial pathway for us as the current disposal method (deep-well injection) is losing favor amidst water scarcity and links to seismic activity.

Our second BoR pilot, Mesquite, is also in the works with our 20’ shipping container and frame nearly on the way to us. We are facing some challenges in obtaining local zoning at the planned pilot site in Socorro, which sits in a residential neighborhood. We are engaged with Socorro’s planning & zoning commission and have met with some of the neighbors. Opposition to the pilot plant includes concerns regarding noise, groundwater contamination, and potential odors coming from the “toxic” brine. We are preparing some outreach events with the community and hope to bring them onboard, but are also keeping back-up sites in mind. We can’t help but notice that these complaints are similar to the objections to many coastal desalination plants.

Wins

• TWDB funding. A grant application which we prepared in March was awarded! The Texas Water Development Board awarded Plum Creek a $200k grant to match Plum Creek’s $200k cost-share commitment. We will build an deliver a containerized desalting unit to Lockhart, TX in 2026 to help conserve agricultural water.

• Track B qualification. Our XPRIZE consortium team, Renaissance Water, qualified for Track B of the XPRIZE Water Scarcity. From now until December 19th, we will put together test results and attempt to become semifinalists in both Track A (20 semifinalist teams) and Track B (30 semifinalist teams).

• Accelerator programs. We have been accepted to the MassChallenge Early Stage Security & Resilience Program, which we will participate in this fall. We have also advanced to Round 3 (of 4) of Hub71, an Abu-Dhabi-based accelerator sponsored by Plug and Play. If accepted, we will be spending much time in Abu Dhabi in 2026 to establish a presence in the Middle East and to engage with local customers, investors, and manufacturers.

What else we’ve been up to

• XPRIZE Track A Qualified team summit + Seattle visit. I flew to Calgary in mid-August to participate in the a summit of the XPRIZE Track A Qualified Teams. We learned a lot more about the details of the Qualified team testing and also made some good connections.

• Patent response. Our pending patent was negatively reviewed by the EU patent office. Christine and I reviewed the objections closely and concluded that the examiner did not really understand the content of our patent. We put together a document to assist MIT’s lawyers with putting together a response. We have met with them and plan to review the response before it is due to the EU patent office in mid-September.

• Remote support of Searay + Chimaera. After returning to Boston, our friends in Denver and Singapore ran into issues with their pilots. Some problems were trickier to diagnose than others, but with some prompt data analysis from our team and some back-and-forth, we have been able to get both systems operating back to normal. Some good lessons learned for our user manual and we’ve made some important changes for scale-up of the technology.

What’s up next

• Building Gemini. We will be focused on building Gemini in September so commission it in October so that we may use the skids to collect our XPRIZE Track A Qualifying Test data and then ship it to California for commissioning in November.

• Socorro campaign. September will be a critical month to hear and address the neighbors’ concerns so that we can resolve zoning in time for an archaeological survey to occur, followed by federal approval to dig the brine pond. If not, then we will need time to shift to another site while we construct the plant.

as always, please reach out if you have any questions, comments, or concerns.
-quantum