Today’s primary desalination methods—distillation and membrane filtration—are insufficient to completely combat the fresh-water crisis. Both are energy and maintenance intensive, rendering them cost prohibitive in a wide array of potential water-saving applications.
NONA Technologies is electrifying water desalination with a technology that works at room temperature without high pressure—requiring just three pounds per square inch (known as PSI).
“We have an electro-membrane approach,” explains Bruce Crawford, the startup’s CEO and co-founder. “Instead of using heat or a filter, we use an electrical field to pull impurities out of the water.”
NONA Technologies’s energy-efficient solution is also low maintenance and simple to operate. The company’s first product is a compact, portable unit that can serve as a climate-adaptation device for NGO work and disaster relief, and will also be used by sailors. NONA Technologies has co-developed this device with the U.S. Army Natick Soldier Systems Center, generating revenue from delivering prototypes. The product will launch commercially this summer, according to Crawford.
NONA Technologies is also developing a system for cleaning industrial wastewater, designed to address the sector’s water-consumption problem: industry currently accounts for about one-fifth of global freshwater use.
Crawford sees evaporative cooling as a major market for NONA Technologies. The startup’s tech can remove sediments that build up in the cooled water, recycling 99 percent of it and drastically reducing the amount of new water facilities need to draw in. Demand for this application is growing as more AI-server cooling towers come online.
NONA Technologies has two tests of its industrial system lined up for later this year, one in a cooling tower and one involving process water for a cosmetics company. The five-person startup also intends to raise a Seed II round in late 2025 or early 2026.
NONA Technologies spun out of MIT, where Crawford was getting his MBA when his dorm neighbor, Junghyo Yoon, asked him to help commercialize the water-desalination tech he was developing. Crawford had just left a pre-revenue Rivian Automotive, and Yoon was wrapping up a six-year stint as a postdoctoral researcher at MIT.
The startup joined Greentown Boston in May 2024, where the team works in the prototyping lab, machine shop, and office.
“The people on the Greentown team are really the biggest thing that drew us to Greentown,” Crawford says. “We draw on the expertise of Greg Ralich and Kay Lowden a lot, and Jackie Hedberg’s always connecting us with resources, Rocío Céspedes is connecting us with corporate partners. When we were choosing a space, we’d ask about, ‘How do you manage disposing of this fluid, this type of electrical connection?’ When we asked those questions of Greg, he said, ‘Yeah, we’ve done that six times with startups really similar to you.’ The people are the biggest thing for us here.”
