Driving Innovation in Pure Water
Paul Haycock is Engineering Product Manager for Marlowe Environmental Services (MES), focussing on pure water systems which encompass a range of solutions designed to produce varying grades of clean water; from ‘ultra-pure’ as required in the pharmaceutical and laboratory sector to purified water for healthcare and industrial manufacturing processes. Paul joined MES in August 2024.
Paul’s main areas of responsibility, include:
- Water softening: Essential to preventing scale build-up in high temperature systems. Scale build-up can compromise both hygiene and efficiency.
- Reverse osmosis: Purifying water by removing minerals, salts and bacteria using a semi-permeable membrane to separate water molecules from other substances.
- Filtration: Removing certain contaminants through a range of filtration methods, including ion, carbon, nitrate and sand filters.
Paul explains: “Pure water is essential for a number of sectors, including pharmaceutical manufacture, industrial processes and food production. In the healthcare sector clean water is used extensively; in operating theatres to sterilise surgical instruments and the trolleys that transport them, during critical medical procedures such as renal dialysis and in laboratories, as part of blood analysing, for example – consistency and reliability is crucial.
Growth industries needing clean water include battery production, driven by the demand for electric vehicles and electronic devices which require ever smaller and more powerful batteries. Electrolytes are a crucial component of lithium-ion batteries. Impurities in the water used to prepare this electrolyte can compromise the battery’s performance, lifespan, and safety. What’s great about MES, is we’re open-source suppliers, which means we can be versatile and agile using products available on the market, rather than relying on specific technologies. Solutions can be tailored to the customer and application as we’re not tied to any brand in particular.
Ensuring pure water is non-negotiable in the sectors we work in, but it comes at a price. Reverse osmosis in particular wastes a huge amount of water – in some cases for every 1 lite of clean water made, 5 litre is discarded. To combat this, MES is committed to developing supporting water recycling systems, diverting this wastewater to toilets and irrigation. In data centre cooling for example, clean water is essential for temperature control, with the rise of AI increasing demands for power and water compared with traditional Google searches. To improve sustainability and reduce costs our water recycling and reuse solutions are gaining traction, preventing wastage, saving data centre owners huge amounts of money and actually returning filtered water to the data centre that is cleaner than when it started.”
Paul has always worked in the water treatment sector, starting out in legionella prevention in 1992, and then moving into the electro-mechanical side, followed by softening and filtration. Before joining WCS, Paul predominantly dealt with water purification for healthcare applications and it’s this sector that is one of his main focuses for MES.
He said: “Currently, the majority of MES’ water purification work comes from industrial processes, but with my experience and connections, I hope to develop our offering in laboratories, hospitals and pharmaceuticals over the next 12 months.
In the future, I see hydrogen as ‘one to watch’, for cars in particular. Manufacturers are investing in developing hydrogen vehicles, and it won’t be long until this becomes a viable alternative to EV. We have the technology and experience to support this sector, so I’m keeping an eye on developments. I believe that once hydrogen comes on the market as an alternative fuel, the EV market will drop off – hydrogen offers a much more ‘like for like’ petrol alternative.
Water purification is a varied and in-demand part of the water treatment space, with applications that are crucial to all aspects of modern life. MES is at the forefront of identifying the latest technologies, with a focus on improving the efficacy and sustainability of our approach.”