Every Monday, we present to you a company that innovates.
Oneka Technologies is a company of about forty employees, who work mainly in Sherbrooke but some of whom are also closer to the sea, in Florida, Chile and now in Nova Scotia.
Do these people know that it all started with a shower in Corsica?
This is where Dragan Tutic first wondered where the water (from the shower!) was coming from while standing in a desert landscape. The questioning lasted longer than the Corsican holidays.
In 2015, Dragan Tutic founded Oneka Technologies whose mandate was, from the start, to design water desalination processes to serve coastal populations who lacked it.
The early years were spent developing the technology. “We also spent a lot of time in Asia and the Caribbean to see if there was really a need,” says Dragan Tutic, who found confirmation there that there was.
On March 14, Oneka unveiled its Glacier project, its most recent and largest desalination device.
It is a unit capable of producing 500,000 liters of drinking water per day using a technique that already existed for pumping oil and which has something a little poetic about it: it is the energy of waves that does the work and transforms the salt water.
Pure technical process, explains more prosaically Dragan Tutic.
“It’s really the waves that activate a pump that desalinates the membranes in a purely mechanical way. »
This Glacier – which is simply placed on the water, with buoys – will therefore pump the salt water collected from the bottom of the ocean by a pipe, by the movement of the waves. The salt is removed by a reverse osmosis process, the same that concentrates the sugar in the maple sap to make syrup.
In this case, the by-product is a brine that will be returned to the sea, away from the coast, while the drinking water goes in the direction of the mainland, in a pipe.
Oneka already produces smaller devices. This new unit increases production capacity.
The Glacier device will be installed during a test period in Nova Scotia, on Cape Sable Island. Oneka has opened an office there.
The Glacier project costs just over $14 million to develop, including $6.7 million coming from Ottawa through Canada’s Oceans Supercluster. Oneka is working in partnership with another Eastern Townships company, H2O Innovation, which will produce the machine in its Ham-Nord plant.
About 1% of the world’s water currently comes from desalination, says Dragan Tutic. For coastal populations, units like Glacier can make all the difference.
“The problem is that we use a lot more water than nature gives us. We must therefore use new sources, including the ocean. Normally, it is the fuel that is used to power generators – we make electricity, we activate electric motors for high pressure pumps. »
A big plus for Oneka is that no fuel is used to remove salt from the water, reducing the operating cost and overall energy footprint of the exercise. Everything is done without electricity, without energy conversion.
With the water supply problem spreading across all continents, Oneka’s solution could be of interest to many markets.
The company has a demonstration system in Chile, near Santiago. The system supplies water to a local marina. It is a unit that complements needs, in an exchange of services that Oneka hopes will lead to a greater Chilean deployment.
“With our largest unit, we will be able to meet all their needs”, specifies Dragan Tutic, who adds that Chile is one of its markets of the future, in particular with its mining industry which is thirsty for water and must reduce its greenhouse gas emissions.
Oneka Technologies does not sell the devices, it offers the service contract.
“With this technology, as everything is purely mechanical, we are able to hire and train local labor, fishermen or others, to operate the systems. »
Oneka Technologies is also beginning to establish itself in the Caribbean with a more modest device and is targeting California.
“Last summer, I saw on the news that Corsica was starting to run out of water and that it was becoming a real issue,” says the founder of Oneka. Who knows if the Quebec company will not end up establishing itself in the very place of its genesis?
