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January 21, 2025
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Game-Changing Desalination on Foresight 50 List

Calgary start-up Ionic Solutions offers technology with high electrical efficiencies and freshwater recovery rates

“Ionic Solutions was founded with one goal-- to solve water scarcity. Reinventing desalination. We believe our technology developed and tested over a decade has a potential to completely transform the way industries, energy suppliers, businesses, and communities consume our planet's most vital resource.”

--Barry Johnson Co-founder & President Ionic Solutions

Interview with Jordan Grose, Executive Vice President at Ionic Solutions

By Suzanne Forcese

WT: Please introduce yourself to our viewers and tell us about the journey that brought you to Ionic Solutions.

Grose: I joined the company in 2020 to speed up the commercialization and industry adoption of our Capacitive Electrodialysis Reversal (C-EDR) technology, which is the greenest, most sustainable, desalination technology in the world.

Prior to Ionic Solutions, I spent 17 years working for an entrepreneurial engineering consultancy where I grew and diversified many parts of the business by bringing new business lines to the market and opening regional offices in SE Asia. I hold an MSc in Mechanical Engineering and an MBA from the University of Calgary.

I am passionate about innovative and sustainable technologies which solve big world problems, like water scarcity.

WT: Provide us please with an overview of Ionic Solutions.

Grose: Ionic Solutions was founded in Calgary in 2009 by Barry Johnson and Azar Yazdanbod who shared a passion for solving water scarcity by bringing much-needed innovation to the water sector. Azar’s background is in Geotechnical Engineering while Barry is an Engineer with an entrepreneurial background.

With Azar’s breakthrough research in the capacitive removal of salt ions from water, using an electric field, they embarked on more than a decade of R&D to prove the incredible capabilities of this new low power, high performance method of desalination.

Today, the company has grown to a team of 15 staff, including design and manufacturing teams, who have developed C-EDR technology into a product that exceeds the capabilities of other desalination methods currently on the market – without the environmental impact.

The development of water technologies like ours is crucial to the global energy transition, our fight against water scarcity and our planet’s changing climate.

WT: Briefly describe the team talent and define the company mission.

Grose: The team at Ionic Solutions includes engineers, scientists, entrepreneurs, and water industry experts. They have worked for some of the biggest technology brands in the world and bring a wealth of experience in developing, testing, and commercializing new products.

Our mission is to save more than 1 billion litres of water, using our game changing desalination technology, by 2030. We believe our technology will become the standard against which all other methods of desalination are measured within the next decade.

WT: Congratulations on being named in the 2024 Foresight 50 as one of Canada’s most investible ventures! What has this recognition meant for you?

Grose: It’s a huge honour for the team and recognition of our hard work and how far we have come as a company with our critical solution to water scarcity and climate change. It has also opened some exciting conversations with investors and industry partners.

Thank you to Foresight for honouring us and continuing to champion water technology companies like ours as essential pieces of the climate solution.

WT: What is the ‘revolutionary factor’ that makes Ionic Solutions stand above traditional desalination methods - and likely garnered the attention of Foresight?

Grose: C-EDR uses up to 90% less power than traditional methods of desalination, like reverse osmosis. Even tackling the saltiest brines, our technology uses as much as 65% less power than reverse osmosis uses desalinating mildly salty water.

Our technology is also more efficient than other methods of desalination – returning up to 95% of drawn water as fresh water – and it is more adaptable to fluctuating salinities.

Another advantage is that, in many applications, our technology requires no chemicals.

The combined benefit of low energy, high efficiency and zero-chemicals means we can reduce our clients’ OPEX by as much as 78%.

All of this is achieved while significantly reducing carbon emissions and supporting the environmental goals of our clients.

WT: Please describe the technology. How is it different from traditional methods?

Grose: Typically, desalination is achieved by using high pressure to push water across a membrane. This is both energy intensive, resulting in a large volume of carbon emissions, and inefficient. 

C-EDR uses a small electric current to move positive and negatively charged ions (salt particles) across an ion-selective membrane. This results in the creation of alternating streams of fresh water and salty water.

Because our technology doesn’t use mechanical energy, and because we don’t rely on high pressure, it uses just a small fraction of the energy of traditional desalination methods like reverse osmosis. 

WT: What are the applications?

Grose: The potential applications are vast. Essentially, anywhere there is overly salty water, our technology is applicable.

Desalination within the industrial and power sectors is a huge opportunity to save large volumes of water and carbon emissions. Municipal water softening and desalination of overly salty irrigation water are other applications where our technology excels. There are also opportunities within the oil and gas sector, manufacturing, agriculture etc. 

WT: Tell us about your pilot projects in New York, Saskatchewan, Alberta & BC.

Grose: We currently have two pilot projects in the power sector. One is in Saskatchewan where our technology is replacing an ageing lime softener and reducing the workload of a demineralization system. The other is in New York City where our technology is desalinating highly saline reverse osmosis reject water, which can then be recycled back into the system as useful water.

Earlier in 2024, we completed more than 4,000 hours of runtime softening municipal water in the hard water community of Taylor, northern B.C.

In Spring 2025, we will be desalinating irrigation water, contaminated by road salt run-off, for a golf course in Calgary.

WT: What stage are you currently at in the company's development?

Grose: Ionic Solutions is currently at TRL-8 and we hope to be at TRL-9 sometime in 2026.

WT: Are you looking to increase the talent on the team?

Grose: We’re always seeking talented individuals with a passion for technology and water conservation. Individuals can reach out to us via our website or LinkedIn.

WT: What about partnerships and investors?

Grose:  Yes! We would love to hear from anyone interested in better desalination or partnering with us.

WT: Moving forward...What is next?

Grose: We’re working on a second-generation C-EDR cell for a demonstration unit which will be installed for a client in New York later this year. That unit will scale up what we have already achieved in our pilot, processing a much higher volume of water.

Other projects we plan to embark on soon include desalinating coalbed methane water for an oil and gas client here in Alberta and desalinating estuary water for a community in California.

In general, we’re focused on refining our product through industry runtime and developing future generations of our technology to meet the needs of our clients.









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