Just a year after the BP spill, Hoek and his colleague Subir Bhattarcharjee, now Water Planet's Chief Technology Officer, co-founded the company, with Costner and his long time business partner Rod Lake as the company's founding investors. In just over five years, Water Planet has achieved remarkable and rapid success in commercialising two leading-edge water treatment technologies.
To put Water Planet's accomplishment into perspective, the process of taking a water treatment technology from R&D to the marketplace typically takes a decade or more. Moreover, most technology advancements in the conservative water treatment industry are evolutionary, not disruptive, in nature. But Water Planet already has orders for scores of systems that incorporate its revolutionary IntelliFlux® artificial intelligence based control software in projects from North America to the Middle East. In addition, its PolyCera® membranes have broken new ground by merging the robustness of rugged but costly ceramic membranes – able to treat the most challenging waters – at the much lower cost of polymeric membranes.
Today, Water Planet is pioneering the use of true artificial intelligence, or machine learning, in the water treatment industry.
"Artificial intelligence brings features that society has grown accustomed to in other areas of their lives to the water industry. The complex mathematics that goes into optimising a water filtration process can't be calculated offline by humans fast enough to be helpful," said Hoek.
"It took an environmental disaster to make the connection with Eric and now Water Planet, but I am proud to be involved with a team that is poised to make a fundamental difference for a world seeking solutions to ensure our water future," Costner said.
