OUR GREAT MINDS

    by Tina Olivero

    Kevin Costner Is Into Smart Membranes For Sustainable Water

    In 2009, famed actor and environmentalist Kevin Costner and Eric Hoek, then a professor of engineering at UCLA, joined forces to develop a system aimed at cleaning up oil and gas contaminated water.

    In 2010, this system was put to a different kind of test when it was used to clean up the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Throughout this process, Costner and Hoek forged a strong alliance that continues to this day with Water Planet, Inc., a Los Angeles-based company that sells the world’s first smart membrane products.

    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 and is a finalist in the prestigious Global Water Awards as the Breakthrough Water Technology Company of the Year.

    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 optimizing a water filtration process can’t be calculated offline by humans fast enough to be helpful,” said Hoek.

    “Computers excel at rapid computations, including compiling waves of information and performing integration, derivatives, or logarithmic fits. Our experience already shows significant cost savings by using artificial intelligence to optimize membrane systems, which helps deliver more water at less cost,” he added.

    In keeping with “Why Wastewater,” the theme of this year’s World Water Day, both Costner and Hoek remain deeply committed to advancing water sustainability through reuse.

    “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. 

    kevin costner

    About Water Planet

    Based in Los Angeles, California, Water Planet (www.waterplanet.com) sells the world’s first smart membrane products, which enable the most reliable and cost-effective approach to industrial water reuse. PolyCera® robust & easy-to-clean ultrafiltration membranes and IntelliFlux® self-adaptive flux optimization for ultrafiltration membranes mean more water and less cost.

    Tina Olivero

    30 years ago, Tina Olivero looked into the future and saw an opportunity to make a difference for her province and people. That difference came in the form of the oil and gas sector. Six years before there was even a drop of oil brought to the shores of Newfoundland, she founded The Oil and Gas Magazine (THE OGM) from a back room in her home on Signal Hill Road, in St. John’s, Newfoundland. A single mother, no financing, no previous journalism or oil and gas experience, she forged ahead, with a creative vision and one heck of a heaping dose of sheer determination. With her pioneering spirit, Ms. Olivero developed a magazine that would educate, inspire, motivate and entertain oil and gas readers around the world — She prides herself in marketing and promoting our province and resources in unprecedented ways. The OGM is a magazine that focuses on our projects, our people, our opportunities and ultimately becomes the bridge to new energy outcomes and a sustainable new energy world. Now diversifying into the communications realms, a natural progression from the Magazine, The OGM now offers an entirely new division - Oil & Gas Media. Today, The Oil and Gas Magazine is a global phenomenon that operates not only in Newfoundland, but also in Calgary and is read by oil and gas enthusiasts in Norway, Aberdeen, across the US and as far reaching as Abu Dhabi, in the Middle East. Believing that Energy is everyone’s business, Ms. Olivero has combined energy + culture to embrace the worlds commitment to a balance of work and home life as well as fostering a foundation for health and well being. In this era of growth and development business and lifestyle are an eloquent mix, there is no beginning or end. Partnering with over 90 oil and gas exhibitions and conferences around the world, Ms. Olivero's role as a Global Visionary is to embrace communication in a way that fosters oil and gas business and industry growth in new and creative ways.

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      OGM - Our Great Minds