Magna Imperio Systems Corp. (MI Systems), a leading provider of innovative water treatment solutions, is bringing its cutting-edge technology to California to save cities and businesses money on water treatment. The Texas-based company has opened its first satellite office in Newport Beach, Calif. to better serve municipal water and wastewater facilities and a variety of industries in the water-stressed state.
California faces an acute water crisis. A growing population and hotter climate are stressing water supplies. Across the state, seawater intrusion afflicts groundwater basins, which suffer from high salt content and are contaminated with arsenic and fluoride. The problem that grows worse as drought causes aquifers to be drawn down.
“There’s a huge need for energy-efficient, cost-effective water treatment solutions for salty and brackish water in California,” said Founder and CEO Grant Page, a Navy veteran. “We’ve developed a technology that will make an enormous difference for municipalities and industries that need more water, need to reduce water costs, or must meet environmental regulations at an affordable cost. Whether it’s source water, a wastewater stream, industrial discharge or legacy contamination, we can treat it.”
Already, MIS has completed a pilot project at a wastewater treatment plant in Ventura County, treating 14,000 gallons per day at the Ventura County Waterworks District 16 Piru Wastewater Treatment Plant. The company is exploring partnerships with other wastewater treatment agencies, municipalities, and industries.
MIS’s groundbreaking technology is designed to efficiently strip the salt from water, recovering up to 99 percent of the water and bringing it to drinking water standards. That means for every 100 gallons of brackish water, MIS can produce 99 gallons of clean water, and only 1 gallon of brine that must be discharged — saving dischargers money. MIS provides comprehensive solutions that cover the entire treatment process. The company’s novel modular system can be installed in any place at any scale, and MIS also handles engineering, installation and operations.
“Everybody talks about environmental sustainability, but our technology makes sustainability actually possible. It’s one of the core pillars of our business,” Chief Operations and Technology Officer Chad Unrau, PhD, said. “At the same time, we understand that at the end of the day customers need solutions that make sense financially. Our system provides a highly efficient solution at an affordable cost.”
Using its Electrochemical Nano Diffusion (END®) process, MIS can treat water of all qualities — including the brine discharge that results from reverse osmosis, a common process in California that can waste up to nearly a third of the water.
“We can either put our system on that brine stream and recover 95-plus percent of the water, or we can treat the water from the beginning. The END® technology works well in both cases,” Unrau said.
The Newport Beach office will be the first of multiple satellite offices in California.