Halicene couples the waste heat of data centers with oilfield produced water. Our membrane distillation platform turns a cooling burden and a disposal liability into clean water, concentrated brine, and a pathway to domestic lithium.
The Permian Basin is becoming home to both the country's produced-water problem and its data center boom. Each creates a massive waste stream. We put them together.
Hypersaline produced water (100,000–200,000 mg/L TDS) is mostly pumped into disposal wells — a practice now constrained by induced seismicity, regulatory pressure, and pore-space limits. Disposal costs producers $0.50–$1.50 per barrel and rising.
Gigawatts of new AI compute are being built in West Texas for cheap power and land. Liquid-cooled racks reject heat at 45–65°C — too cool for power generation, costly to dump, and wasted in a water-scarce region.
Vacuum multi-effect membrane distillation (V-MEMD) is proven, modular, and uniquely suited to low-grade heat and extreme salinity — conditions where reverse osmosis can't operate. Pure water vapor crosses a hydrophobic membrane; salts, and everything else, stay behind.
An offtake alternative to disposal wells — priced below trucking-plus-SWD, immune to seismicity moratoriums, and a 40% cut in the volume you ultimately have to dispose. Turn a liability with regulatory tail-risk into a fixed, contracted cost.
Free or revenue-generating heat rejection that shrinks chiller load, plus distilled water returned for cooling makeup in a region where water procurement is a permitting risk. Your waste heat becomes a community asset — a story regulators and neighbors want.
New industrial water supply in chronically drought-stressed West Texas, reduced injection-induced seismicity, and a domestic route to lithium from brines already coming out of the ground — no new mines, no new wells.
Texas and New Mexico regulators are restricting injection wells over induced seismicity. Producers need offtake alternatives, and beneficial-reuse rules for treated produced water are moving toward approval.
Multi-gigawatt AI campuses are siting in West Texas for stranded power. Liquid cooling is becoming standard, delivering hotter, more usable waste heat every hardware generation.
Commercial V-MEMD units (memsys) run today on diesel waste heat; a 2022 Permian pilot treated 170,000 ppm brine to <500 ppm using compressor waste heat. Integration — not invention — is the work.
We're developing our pilot design and economic model with prospective data center and producer partners. If you operate in either world — or want to back the team connecting them — we'd love to talk.
hello@halicene.com