Reverse osmosis wasn't built for cooling water. ICP was.

ICP — Ion Concentration Polarization — is an electrochemical water treatment process invented at MIT that uses a small electric field to pull dissolved minerals out of water, splitting the flow into a clean stream and a concentrated stream. Unlike reverse osmosis, the water never passes through a membrane, so there is no membrane to foul. NONA's RECOVER system uses ICP to recover up to 90% of industrial cooling water on-site.

Reverse osmosis forces water through a fine membrane at high pressure (often hundreds of PSI), and that membrane scales, fouls, and needs regular replacement. ICP instead applies a low-voltage electric field at roughly 3 PSI and room temperature to move minerals aside, so the water never crosses a membrane. The result: no membrane fouling, far lower pressure, and a process that tolerates the cooling-tower chemistry RO struggles with.

No. ICP uses ion-selective membranes to set up the electric field, but the cooling water never passes through them the way it does in reverse osmosis. There is no filtration membrane for minerals to clog or foul, which removes the recurring membrane-replacement and cleaning cycle that drives RO operating costs.

ICP operates at roughly 3 PSI and room temperature. Reverse osmosis typically runs at hundreds of PSI, which is why RO systems are energy-intensive and hard on equipment. The low-pressure, ambient-temperature design is a core reason RECOVER has low operating cost.

Yes. ICP is fouling-tolerant and compatible with the corrosion inhibitors and biocides already running in your cooling towers, so there is no rip-and-replace of your water-treatment program. RECOVER bolts onto your existing cooling loop and lets you run higher cycles of concentration instead of dumping water to control mineral buildup.

RECOVER recovers up to 90% of your cooling water. A single 10 MW data center's cooling system consumes roughly 230,000 tons (about 60 million gallons) of water a year, and 20–50% of it is typically dumped as blowdown. RECOVER continuously demineralizes that water so it keeps circulating instead of going down the drain.

No — RECOVER works with the evaporative cooling you already run, which remains the cheapest and most efficient way to reject heat. Rather than switching to dry or adiabatic cooling that costs roughly 1.9–2.3x more, RECOVER recovers the water your evaporative system would otherwise lose as blowdown. It is an add-on to your loop, not a replacement for your thermal design.

ICP was invented and proven by NONA's founding team at MIT, and its development was funded by the U.S. Army for field water production where reliability and low maintenance are non-negotiable. NONA's first industrial RECOVER pilot is running today with Tracy Renewable Energy, recovering cooling water on a working site.

Yes. Ion Concentration Polarization (ICP) is an electrochemical alternative to reverse osmosis, invented at MIT and commercialized by NONA in the RECOVER system. Instead of forcing water through a high-pressure membrane, ICP applies a low-voltage electric field at roughly 3 PSI to pull dissolved minerals aside. For the high-conductivity chemistry of cooling tower blowdown, that means no membrane fouling, lower operating cost, and higher recovery than membrane systems typically reach.

Membrane-based reverse osmosis systems are typically capped around 75–85% recovery on high-conductivity cooling tower blowdown — beyond that, dissolved minerals begin to scale the membrane and the system has to reject the rest as waste. ICP is not limited the same way: because the water never crosses a filtration membrane, RECOVER recovers up to 90% of blowdown on-site and returns it to the cooling loop.

RECOVER can cut a facility's make-up water demand by up to 50% and lower water-related operating cost by up to 40%, because it recovers up to 90% of cooling tower blowdown and lets you run higher cycles of concentration. It runs at roughly 3 PSI and room temperature with no membrane-replacement cycle, so it avoids the pump energy and membrane cost that drive reverse osmosis OpEx.

Yes. RECOVER is a modular, side-stream system that scales with your cooling load. A 150 MW data center consumes on the order of 120 million gallons of water per year for cooling (EPRI, 2025), and 20–50% of a tower's throughput is typically dumped as blowdown. RECOVER tees into the blowdown line to recover up to 90% of that water without changing how the towers run.