A 2013 pilot project that started on Vancouver’s Burrard inlet seashore is now winning international bids, creating BC jobs and protecting Canada’s environment. The Government of British Columbia’s Innovative Clean Energy (ICE) fund and Sustainable Development Technology Canada (SDTC) first supported Saltworks Technologies in its drive to commercialize an innovative technology that treats the most challenging industrial salty wastewaters. The product now has global installations, all built in BC.
SaltMaker Evaporator Crystallizer in BC (Credits: Saltworks Technologies)
Our country recognizes that cleantech innovation can advance our resource sector as well as diversify our economy. Saltworks investors, partners, and team sent plants out to oil, gas, mining, and industrial sites, making clean water from very salty brines that were previously trucked off site. The SaltMakerinnovation changed this equation.
Benjamin Sparrow, CEO, Saltworks Technologies
Saltworks now operates two factories in BC, building some of the world’s most advanced water technology, with customers including major oil and gas and mining companies, as well as NASA.
The early joint strategic funding from ICE and SDTC set Saltworks on course with a first plant, which withdrew waste heat from a portside cold storage facility, saving carbon emissions in the process. After multiple full-scale installations internationally, the company brought the technology home in 2016 and built a plant in the Interior of British Columbia for Wastech. The plant employs waste heat thermal energy from reciprocating clean power engines, lowering greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions compared to alternative treatment options, while producing clean water and jobs.