Our Story
A stubborn Norwegian idea, tested by the sea for ten years.
It started with a simple observation: the ocean already has all the pressure you need to push water through a membrane. You just have to go deep enough. Every conventional desalination plant on earth spends enormous energy recreating that pressure on the surface. Why not use the pressure that's already there?
That idea - obvious in physics, radical in practice - became Waterfountain. Not a research paper. A machine you lower into the sea.
"We didn't invent anything. We just stopped fighting the ocean and started working with it."
The first prototype went into Norwegian coastal waters in 2016. It broke. The second one broke too. For years, the team built, lowered, tested, failed, and rebuilt - on a dock, on a boat, at night, in winter. There was no lab. The ocean was the lab.
The timeline
Built at sea. Tested at sea. Improved at sea.
Product design and early simulations - defining the concept.
Development and simulation refinement - validating the physics.
WF+ commercial module finalized - the compact, deployable unit.
WF10 platform concept defined for infrastructure-scale output.
Ongoing field operations and partner validation in Nordhordland.
The work
There is no shortcut to something the ocean has to approve.
Every design decision in Waterfountain came from the water, not a whiteboard. The ocean rejected ten years of good ideas and kept only the ones that survived. What's left is something honest - and something that works.
How the technology works