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Mohammed Rasool Qtaisha knows what it's like to be thirsty.

The 29-year-old chemical engineering PhD student at the University Ottawa grew up in Jordan, where water shortages were a way of life. And his experience is shared by millions of others around the world.

""The government gives us warning, of course. But the water would be off for days, sometimes two, three days per week, so people would have to prepare by storing water," he said.

But as populations increase and shortages become more frequent, lack of water isn't just a poor nation's problem any more. At least 36 U.S. states are expected to face shortages within the next five years, according to U.S. government estimates, and by 2025, nearly 50 per cent of the world's population will live in water-stressed areas, according to the UN.

In recent years, nations have started privatizing or exporting fresh water, placing a value on the life staple like any other precious commodity.

But some people aren't waiting for disaster to strike before taking action.

Inspired by his circumstances, Mr. Qtaishat founded Water For All with the aim of developing a new water technology to turn seawater into clean, drinking water on a large scale.

Current desalination technology extracts drinking water from seawater through several filtering steps and something called reverse osmosis, in which salt water is passed through a polymer membrane, separating solute from solvent. The main problem is that because sodium chloride is such a small particle, the process is slow and very energy intensive.

In 2004, Mr. Qtaishat approached the Middle East Desalination Research Centre in Oman to fund his startup, called Water for All, and presented his method for developing a far more efficient way of turning seawater into drinking water. The centre was so impressed, they offered him a scholarship to come to Canada and develop his technology.

Although Mr. Qtaishat's solution is top secret while the patent is still pending, he says refining the process is all about the type of material used in the membrane. With this new material, his prototype is able to run on solar panels and produce 50 kilograms of water per metre square of the membrane per hour. That is 600 to 700 per cent more efficient than current technology, which produces about seven to eight kilograms per metre per hour.

But Mr. Qtaishat is up against stiff competition. General Electric has a large water purification division looking into similar technology and the U.S.-based National Science Foundation recently announced a $2.5-million grant to the University of Michigan to assemble a crack team of experts to study the same thing.

"Everyone is looking at water treatment and making it more efficient. A number of communities are already dependent on seawater desalination and then there are the communities in coastal areas that are looking more and more to the sea," said to Peter Huck, a professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and NSERC Chair in Water Treatment at the University of Waterloo.

"Australia, for instance, has been in a drought situation for a number of years. Australia is looking very seriously at this and it is being studied on both coasts of the U.S."

But it's not just energy costs; according Mr. Huck, there are problems with membrane technology and this is holding it back from being the answer to every parched country's problems. Membranes become clogged — just like any filter — and have to be flushed or cleaned frequently with chemicals.

Mr. Qtaishat says he is not worried.

Water For All has already attracted financial support, including $286,000 in funding from the Middle East Desalination Research Center. Water purification company Hyflux Ltd. in Singapore has shown interest in Water for All and Mr. Qtaishat says he will be applying for funding from NRCan, CIDA and other government organizations to get the pilot project going.

"All of this is just in the initial stages right now," he said. "After we prove our concept (with the pilot project) then we can attract investors to go to market."

Qtaishat's business savvy has also won him the top prize of $10,000 at the Ottawa Venture Tech Challenge in May.

"That entry had the idea with biggest scale. In terms of an environmental perspective, water scarcity is something we took for granted, but more and more it is on everyone's mind," said James Smith, Venture Technology Challenge chair and partner with business law firm LaBarge Weinstein, However, George Yap, program director for WaterCan, a charity dedicated to providing clean drinking water to the world's poorest people, is skeptical this kind of technology will solve the world's water woes.

He said that technology such as Mr. Qtaishat's would be good for more developed countries as large, rich municipalities can invest in treatment programs. But the poorest that lack clean water would probably not be able to afford the technology, even if it runs on solar panels.

"Who would be able to run this technology? Where would they get extra parts to fix it?" Mr. Yap said. "We have found time and time again that for the vast majority of the poor and extremely poor, the mundane and simple technologies are the ones that work best,"