A Portable Desalination Plant The Size of Your Household Iron

We get hundreds of questions a week about QuenchSea.

Does it really work? 

Is it magic? 

How do you actually remove the salt from seawater?

In this article we’re going to answer these commonly asked questions and share with you how QuenchSea turns undrinkable ocean saltwater into refreshing and safe drinking water.

Keep reading if you’re curious to know exactly how QuenchSea works and why it’s different from all the other water filter systems available to you on the market today. 

First, the technology. 

From the advanced pre-filter to the reverse osmosis membranes, you’ll find a lot of filtration technology combined in each and every QuenchSea device. 

Let's start with the pre-filter. 

Dirty seawater means damaged reverse osmosis membranes. And as with freshwater, any bacteria and pathogens in feed seawater are going to make you sick too. 

So before seawater goes anywhere near the reverse osmosis membranes inside the main body of QuenchSea, it has to be cleaned. 

The pre-filter uses a triple filtration system to protect the reverse osmosis membranes from damage and remove illness-causing nasties.

What are the three stages of pre-filtration? 

Stage one is sand. The inlet head of the pre-filter uses a coarse sand filter to remove sediments, algae and other suspended solids. As seawater flows through the sand, these larger and heavier particles are prevented from entering QuenchSea. 

The next stage is high precision nano tubes inside the main body of the pre-filter. These provide bacterial ultrafiltration, removing 99.9999% of harmful water borne bacteria such as salmonella, cholera, and E.coli. Ultrafiltration also filters out 99.9999% of harmful protozoa such as giardia and cryptosporidium. 

Lastly, microfiltration. An antibacterial activated carbon microfilter removes chlorine and any remaining organic matter in the feed seawater. This eliminates peculiar water odor and discoloration to improve the final appearance and eventual taste of the drinking water produced by QuenchSea.

So thanks to the pre-filter we’ve got clean seawater free of sediment and common waterborne bacteria and pathogens. 

Yet clean seawater is still full of salt and therefore unsafe to drink. This is where the reverse osmosis membranes come into play. 

But there’s a catch: between 50-60 bars of pressure is needed to overcome the natural osmotic pressure of pure water, that is to literally reverse osmosis. 

No pressure means no reverse osmosis. For a 100% manually powered device this poses a serious design problem. 

If ever you’ve tried pumping up a bike tyre using a hand-pump, you know that creating pressure using only your hands and a freely moving device is hard work.

 With QuenchSea, what allowed us to solve the riddle of turning seawater into freshwater was a little ergonomic wizardry by our product design team.

QuenchSea has two simple features which work together to create an elegant solution to the problem of driving the in-built hydraulic system using only human power.

Feature one is the foldout footplate. This allows you to fix QuenchSea in place and create a pivot point. Feature two  is a long multi-section pump handle. This gives you leverage on the hydraulic system. These two design features work together to make pumping QuenchSea much easier compared to short-handled and non-fixed in place systems. 

Put simply: ‘feet fix, hands pump.’

Pumping QuenchSea forces seawater through the reverse osmosis membranes which separates the feed water into two contrasting solutions: highly concentrated waste brine, and precious demineralised water with 98% dissolved salts completely removed. 

The brine is rejected at pressure through a separate outflow tube on the side of QuenchSea. The demineralised water, clean, free of salt, and safe to drink, is sent to the drinking water outflow tube on the end of the QuenchSea.

Seawater in, freshwater out. 

Easily portable. No mains power, no batteries. 100% off-grid. 

A complete desalination system not much larger than a household iron.

Click here to be one of the first people in the world to own a QuenchSea device. Our 2021 waitlist is almost full.