Desalination Innovations: How Underwater Plants and Portable Devices Are Revolutionizing Water Security

Desalination has long been a critical solution in water-scarce regions, but its importance is growing as extreme water stress and drought conditions intensify. Today, roughly a quarter of the global population faces severe water shortages, pushing desalination from a regional necessity to a global imperative.

Traditionally, scaling desalination has relied on energy-intensive coastal plants using reverse osmosis—a process that forces seawater through semi-permeable membranes to remove salt and contaminants, leaving behind fresh water. However, a wave of startups is now reimagining this model with innovative solutions, including subsea desalination facilities and portable devices for individuals and families.

Global Demand for Desalination

Many nations already depend heavily on desalination for their water supply. In the Middle East, countries such as Saudi Arabia, Israel, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Qatar meet the bulk of their municipal water needs through desalination. Meanwhile, drought-prone regions from Australia to the Caribbean and California have turned to the technology to stabilize their water supplies.

Yet, as geopolitical tensions rise, desalination infrastructure has become a target. The Iran war has highlighted this vulnerability, exposing how critical water systems can be weaponized, leaving hundreds of millions of people at risk.

Underwater Desalination: A More Resilient Solution

To address these challenges, some innovators are moving desalination plants underwater. This approach not only makes the infrastructure harder to target but also leverages natural subsurface pressure to reduce energy consumption.

“I came up with the idea of using natural pressure to run the process.” — Robert Bergstrom, CEO of OceanWell

Bergstrom’s startup places desalination membranes in pods on the ocean floor, where the surrounding pressure reaches 800 pounds per square inch. Each pod can produce up to 1 million gallons of freshwater daily by harnessing this natural pressure, cutting energy use by about 40%—the largest operating cost in traditional desalination.

Unlike conventional systems, OceanWell’s design maintains lower internal pressure within the pods. Seawater flows passively into the pods, pushing through the membranes without high-pressure pumps. Compact pumps then transport the freshwater to shore via pipelines, while the resulting brine disperses harmlessly in the deep ocean.

Environmental Benefits of Subsea Desalination

Conventional desalination plants often discharge concentrated brine at the ocean’s surface, disrupting marine ecosystems. They also harm marine life by trapping organisms against intake screens or pulling them into the facility—a major obstacle to obtaining permits, particularly in California, where OceanWell is based.

OceanWell’s system mitigates these issues by filtering out larger organisms while allowing microscopic ones to pass through the pods and return to the ocean unharmed. The company has already initiated trials to validate its technology, marking a potential breakthrough in sustainable desalination.