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Algaenius

Affordable algae‑powered desalination

Our award-winning algae technology enables more sustainable drinking water treatment, cutting operational costs by up to 50% while reducing carbon impacts.

Get in touchHow it works
kWh per m³, around 65% less energy
4.0 → 1.4
lower operational costs
50%
works alongside current plants
Existing RO
Top water innovation
EIT 2026

The challenge

Desalination is crucial. But it’s costly, energy-hungry and wasteful.

Water scarcity is pushing more and more regions to the sea for their drinking water. Global desalination capacity grew by 40% between 2020 and 2025,¹ and urban water demand is expected to rise by another 80% by 2050.² But today’s reverse osmosis plants all run into the same three problems:

Algae cultures growing in glass flasks under a pink grow-light in the lab

  • Energy

    up to 60% of operating costs

    Reverse osmosis forces seawater through membranes at high pressure. Energy is the biggest cost of every plant, and its biggest source of CO₂ emissions.

  • Brine waste

    3 out of every 4 litres

    Most of the seawater a plant takes in never becomes drinking water. It goes back into the sea as concentrated brine, putting pressure on marine ecosystems.

  • Scaling

    up to €0.13 per m³

    Minerals from seawater build up on the membranes. Plants lose performance and pay for cleaning, chemicals and early membrane replacement. That adds up to €0.13 to every cubic metre.

Every extra kilowatt-hour, litre of brine and cent per cubic metre ends up on the water bill.

Move your cursor through this section. Algae clear the pollution left behind.

Sources

  1. ¹ IDRA & Global Water Intelligence (2025). IDRA Desalination & Reuse Handbook 2025–2026. ↩
  2. ² Flörke, M., Schneider, C. & McDonald, R.I. (2018). Water competition between cities and agriculture driven by climate change and urban growth. Nature Sustainability, 1, 51–58. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-017-0006-8 ↩

Our solution

Let nature do the first part of the work.

Algaenius adds a biobased pretreatment step before reverse osmosis. Living algae take up part of the load from seawater before it reaches the membranes, so the rest of the plant has less work to do.

Flasks of green algae culture connected by tubing in the Algaenius lab

What it delivers, compared to conventional seawater RO:

  • 50% lower OPEX.

    The cost per cubic metre of drinking water is cut in half.

  • ~65% less energy.

    From around 4 kWh to around 1.4 kWh per m³.

    • Conventional RO4.0 kWh/m³
    • With Algaenius1.4 kWh/m³

  • Less brine waste.

    Less concentrated brine discharged back into the sea.

  • Less membrane scaling.

    Longer membrane life and lower cleaning costs.

  • CO₂ captured.

    Algae capture CO₂ as they grow.

  • Built for existing plants.

    Works alongside current reverse osmosis infrastructure.

We’re currently in stealth mode. Technical details are shared under NDA.

Request the technical brief

Recognition

Recognized by the European water community

Founder Meinke van Oenen holding the 2026 EIT Wavemaker Award cheque made out to Algaenius, on the seafront in Málaga
EIT Wavemaker Award, Málaga, October 2026.
  • EIT Water
    Top water innovation

    EIT Wavemaker Awards 2026

    Málaga, October 2026

  • UN 2023 Gamechanger Challenge
    1st place

    UN Gamechanger for Water Challenge 2023

    New York

  • Dutch Junior Water Prize
    Winner

    Dutch Junior Water Prize

    2022 · Represented the Netherlands in Stockholm

  • FD Talenten 2025
    Founder named to the list

    FD Talenten onder 35

    2025

Show all awards (9)
  1. 2026Top water innovationEIT Wavemaker Awards, Málaga
  2. 2026Top 3Climate Launchpad Netherlands
  3. 2026Grand PrizeFOEBE+
  4. 2025Founder named to the listFD Talenten onder 35
  5. 2024Top 3Philips Innovation Award
  6. 20231st placeUN Gamechanger Challenge, New York
  7. 2023WinnerWetskills Water Challenge, New York
  8. 2022WinnerDutch Junior Water Prize, Stockholm
  9. 2022WinnerNational Sustainability Olympiad (INESPO), Utrecht

Backed by globally recognized research and innovation partners. Partner details available on request.

Recognized by

  • EIT Water
  • UN 2023 Gamechanger Challenge
  • Stockholm Junior Water Prize, Nominee The Netherlands
  • Dutch Junior Water Prize
  • FD Talenten 2025
  • Philips Innovation Award, Rough Diamond top 3 finalist
  • FOEBE+
  • Wetskills
Algaenius team in lab coats discussing samples in the laboratory
Researcher pipetting a green algae sample into a flask

Our story

It started with a river and a school project.

Meinke van Oenen grew up along the Dinkel river in Twente. Over the years, she watched it change: less water, and impaired water quality. She realised water is no longer a given.

In high school, she learned the real shortage isn’t water. It’s fresh water. Of all the water on Earth, 97% contains too much salt to drink, and turning it into drinking water today takes huge amounts of energy, mostly from fossil fuels. That means every drop produced this way adds to the emissions that make water scarce in the first place. Meinke wanted to break that cycle, so she looked to nature and started a research project.

That project won the Dutch Junior Water Prize, took first place at the UN Gamechanger for Water Challenge in New York in 2023, and eventually grew into the start-up Algaenius.

Today, Algaenius works with leading research partners to bring algae-based pretreatment to drinking water companies. In 2026, Algaenius won the final of the EIT Wavemaker Awards.

  1. Dinkel river, Twente

  2. School research project

  3. 2022

    Dutch Junior Water Prize

  4. 2023

    UN Gamechanger, New York

  5. 2026

    EIT Wavemaker

Look to nature, and find the future.

Meinke van Oenen, Founder

Contact

Let’s talk water.

We’re working with a select group of partners while in stealth. Are you a drinking water company, investor or research partner? We’d love to hear from you.

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