We made a huge push towards the end of this month to get our XPRIZE rig, Danny, up and running 24/7 over the Thanksgiving holiday. After several working weekends and many late nights, we just made it. We’ve been glad to have some time to breath over the holiday weekend, but ready to get right back to our XPRIZE testing and system assembly later this week.

Highlights

• Visit from world’s largest private desalination developer: At the Greentown Labs Climatetech Summit, Quantum reconnected with Thomas Altmann of ACWA Power, the world’s largest private developer of desalination plants. Thomas visited our site in Chelsea the next day and invited us to pitch at their Innovation Days event this January. We are proceeding with conversations re: a pilot at ACWA Power’s innovation facility in KAUST as well as follow-on collaborations.

• XPRIZE testing to commence after 72+ hours of continuous uptime: At last, we are ready to start our XPRIZE testing next week. We ran preliminary samples last week and are confident we will pass the permeate quality requirements. With 100+ operating hours under our belt and having run continuously since Thanksgiving, we are confident in starting our two weeks of data collection to submit for our team’s chance to advance to the semifinals, which comes with a $200k prize and will keep us in the running to win the $40M grand prize.

  • Huge thanks to Martin for coming in on Thanksgiving Day to fix a leak and get everything sorted out for this final trial run ahead of next week’s testing.

Technical Development: Circulation pump running after many fits and starts

One challenge to implementing our XPRIZE system is procuring an appropriate recirculation pump. These pumps (rated to 80 bar inlet pressure) simply do not exist at our relatively small scales. We obtained Energy Recovery’s smallest circulation pump, which ships with a 5hp motor. This would have wrecked our energy consumption (our high-pressure motor, which does most of the work, is only 1hp). With some advice from our local bearing shops and lots of hard work by Quinton and Martin, we are now able to run this pump with a 0.5hp motor, bringing down our energy consumption substantially compared to Searay (which had a 4hp motor running the circulation pump).

Risks and Challenges
The day before Thanksgiving we received word from the folks at Gradiant that one of Searay’s end cap’s had ruptured. Fortunately, nobody was injured. We spoke with Gradiant the same day and will ship them replacement end cap (with steel fittings) and a new bladder. Fortunately, our demo plant (which uses larger 16” vessels, also from Protec) will be outfitted with stainless plugs, which will not fail like this one did.

• The lesson learned here is to always request an e-mail follow-up. In this case we simply listened to the answer we got on the phone with Protec. Asking for email confirmation should have caught this mistake.

What’s ahead this December

• We will complete our two week’s of XPRIZE testing (uptime target of >98%) and submit our qualified testing report by December 19.

• We will assemble and test Arnold, Danny’s twin pilot system so that we are ready to ship out to California for commissioning in early January.

• We are continuing conversations with distributors in the Middle East, SE Asia, and Australia.

How you can help

With our XPRIZE system commissioned, I am renewing my focus to fundraising. I have two asks for you this month:

• Introductions to relevant angel groups: a small investment ($50-100k) would give us a lot of breathing room ahead of the the anticipated close of our $4M round by mid-2026.

• Connections in the Middle East: looking ahead to our trip to Saudi Arabia in late January, we would like to coordinate the trip to visit with potential customers, partners, and investors in the region.

As always, please reach out if you have any questions, suggestion, or connections.

-quantum