The Puraq desalination process employs a polymeric liquid solvent to extract potable water from seawater. The process employs a range of solvents with molecular weights exceeding 1800, which possess the unique and essential property of dissolving in water at certain temperatures but being virtually insoluble at others. This enables their full recovery from the water stream with virtually no danger of contamination of the final product.

In the course of his research, Dr. Leon Lazare, the company’s founder, tested more than two hundred polymers. His final solvent, designated U-11755, was most effective in its ability to separate fresh from salt water and then to separate from the aqueous stream at lower temperatures.
The makeup and identity of the Puraq polymer is proprietary and remains a trade secret. Extensive engineering plans for pilot plant have been formulated. In 1992, Dr. Lazare estimated the costs of the Puraq desalination process at approximately one dollar per thousand gallons of seawater ($1.37 in 2005 dollars). This is well below the four dollars per thousand gallons that is the lowest projected costs for desalination facilities using reverse-osmosis technology. It is also considerably less than the cost of flash distillation, a desalination technique so energy intensive that its use is essentially confined to oil-producing countries in the Middle East. The Puraq desalination process is technologically simpler and more energy efficient, no small matter at a time of rising oil prices.

The Puraq Solution

The Puraq Company is a New York-based limited partnership founded in 1966. It consists of approximately two hundred limited partners who have supplied all of the Company's equity capital through the purchase of limited partnership units.

Leon Lazare, the company's founding general partner, invented the Puraq process in the 1960s and oversaw its financial and technical development over the course of nearly three decades.

Highlights of Dr. Lazare's career:

  • Bachelor of Chemistry, Cornell University, 1940.
  • Degree in Chemical Engineering, Cornell, 1941.
  • Ph.D. in polymer physical chemistry, Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn (now Polytechnic University).
  • Process engineer, M.W. Kellogg Company, 1946-50.
  • Manager of Engineering Research, American Cyanamid Company, 1950-60.
  • Taught courses in physical chemistry and chemical physics at Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn and New York University, 1960-64.
  • General Partner, Puraq, 1966-94.

Since 1994, Puraq has been managed by Dr. Lazare's brother-in-law, Philip Wander, an investor and accountant; and by Dr. Lazare's three sons, Daniel, a journalist; Peter, an economist; and Jonathan, a urologist. Dr. Lazare died in 1999.