Heard Around The Grove
By Blake Newcomer • March 16, 2026
Without membranes, we don't have potable water. Simple as that.
And though this is simple, membranes in practice are quite complex. They filter out certain molecules in water to reverse whatever contaminated it in the first place. Just like a lint catcher or screen door, things get caught in this filter and "foul" the membrane - or clog it so much that it can't work. It's arguably the biggest cost to operating such machinery.
This week's newsletter highlights two founders making potable water more cost-effective and more accessible, both from two totally different angles.
Membrane-talk
Ninety-seven percent of the world's water is saline. Of the remaining three percent, two percent is locked in glaciers. That leaves the entire global population competing for less than one percent. Further, this 1% is distributed, as Arian Edalat puts it, with no divine justice. Thirty percent of the world controls roughly seventy percent of it.
The technology to address this exists. The problem is that conventional reverse osmosis membranes are, in his words, "dumb plastic". They're consumables that require complex, expensive infrastructure to keep running. These solutions are inaccessible to billions of people globally.
Smarter Desalination with Arian Edalat, Founder & CEO @ Active Membranes. We speak about pioneering work in desalination technology and his mission to address global water scarcity.
Arian's company, licensed out of UCLA in 2022, makes membranes that are electrically conductive & communicate signals in response to fouling events.
Three variables (waveform, voltage, frequency) can be tuned for any given contaminant profile to delay or prevent clogging.
The longer-term vision: membranes that use accumulated operational data and AI to anticipate conditions and adjust autonomously. Hardware consumable becomes intelligent platform.
Once the foundation is laid for smarter membranes, they require less surrounding infrastructure and drive down cost and complexity. As Active Membranes expands, global deployment becomes viable. Communities that used to struggle with potable water access will be changed forever.
Ceramic is for more than just Mugs
Greg Newbloom has successfully failed at starting several companies. Membrion is not one of them.
Purifying Water with Greg Newbloom, CEO @ Membrion. We speak about about the innovative ceramic membrane technology his company is developing for desalination and wastewater treatment.
Membrion makes ceramic membranes. Their silica separates ions from water in environments that destroy conventional organic membranes: acids, oxidizers, dissolved metals, complex industrial effluent.
Most of the industrial facilities generating these streams have been treating them with chemicals or heat for decades because no membrane could survive the conditions. Not anymore!!!
"We're taking that last part of the industry that's been left behind on the desalination journey and we're bringing them to the modern age."
When cleaning is necessary, it's faster and requires fewer chemicals. The company's current focus is semiconductors. These facilities deal with dissolved copper, tin, nickel, and similar metals. Here, regulatory discharge requirements are strict and existing membrane options are limited. Membrion is a team of 30 with fully deployed commercial systems in the field, now focused on building the repeatable operational systems to install more.
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With love, Blake
See you next week!
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