Welcome to the ZLD Space-Time Lab

Where Innovation Meets Reality

Many things don’t turn out the way we imagine they will. That’s especially true when you’re building something new, something unproven. My first assignment at Alfa Laval, ten years ago, was to assist with the commissioning of our first Zero Liquid Discharge (ZLD) system. It was a three-effect evaporator crystallizer, installed at an electronics recycling facility in Thailand. It was a bold system with high expectations. It was also in trouble.

The titanium heat exchangers were corroding. Pipes were plugged with salt crystals. Flow rates were dropping. Crystals were forming where they weren’t supposed to. The system required regular draining and cleaning just to keep going. Despite a strong team on the ground and a very patient customer, we couldn’t get the stability we needed. It was frustrating but also exciting. In principle, the system worked. This was a prototype, and we had established proof of concept. We were trying something new, and even though the reality didn’t align with the ideal, we were on to something.

What we learned, despite the problems, was hugely important: Alfa Laval’s gasketed plate-and-frame heat exchangers could handle salt slurries. That may not sound revolutionary to someone outside this field, but in the world of thermal separation, it opened the door to entirely new possibilities for ZLD. We were able to run AlfaFlash as a crystallizer. That early prototype system became a milestone, not because it worked perfectly, but because it worked enough to prove what was possible. The system failed often, but every failure was a lesson. The problems that revealed themselves on this project became the key points for exploration and growth.

Thermodynamics of Innovation

There’s a thermodynamic analogy I come back to often. The actual work done by a thermodynamic system equals the available potential energy minus the entropy generated. Entropy generation is the cost of imperfection, energy lost due to friction, turbulence, and resistance. It’s the unavoidable cost of doing something real, in the real world. Entropy generation is not just a loss, it’s a lens. What goes wrong has real value in helping is understand, improve, and optimize. If we want to optimize a system, we don’t just look for more energy, we look for ways to reduce entropy generation. This formula shows how much useful work a system can produce. The reversible work is the maximum possible work the system could deliver if there were no losses or inefficiencies. However, real systems generate entropy, and when you multiply that entropy generation by the ambient temperature, you get the amount of work lost, so the actual work is the reversible work minus that loss.

Innovation works much the same way. The actual result of a new idea equals the imagined outcome minus everything that goes wrong. What goes wrong, the failures, the imperfections, the detours, is the entropy generation of innovation. It’s the gap between potential and reality. And just like in thermodynamics, the cost of that gap can’t be ignored. But it can be understood, learned from, and reduced over time. That’s how systems improve.

        𝑊ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑎𝑐𝑡𝑢𝑎𝑙𝑙 ℎ𝑎𝑝𝑝𝑒𝑛𝑠 = 𝑊ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑤𝑒 𝑖𝑚𝑎𝑔𝑖𝑛𝑒 𝑤𝑖𝑙𝑙 ℎ𝑎𝑝𝑝𝑒𝑛 − 𝐸𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑦𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑔𝑜𝑒𝑠 𝑤𝑟𝑜𝑛𝑔

This analogy helps me stay grounded. Our ideas, no matter how perfect they may seem at first, aren’t bound by the laws of physics. Reality is. So, when we take ideas into the field, when we build, run, test, and refine, there’s always going to be a space between the imagined and the actual. That space can be frustrating. It can also be the most valuable space of all. It’s where we see the imperfections. It’s where we learn what really matters.

It’s where innovation happens.

Staying with Problems

Alfa Laval has a culture that encourages staying in that space. We don’t back away when things go wrong, we lean in. We gather around problems. We share stories of what worked (and what didn’t). We brainstorm. We challenge assumptions. We ask each other “what if?” and we imagine what could be possible.

This mindset is what led us to create the ZLD Space-Time Lab.

It’s not a physical lab, though we sometimes meet in person. It’s not just a project or a task force. It’s a collaboration model, a cultural framework that gives people space and time to explore that messy middle between imagination and reality. We bring together ZLD specialists, process engineers, automation experts, and customers. We align on first principles. We challenge each other’s mental models. We explore the gap, not just to fix things, but to understand them.

The name “Space-Time Lab” comes from two ideas. First, you need to get the right people in the same space, whether physical or virtual. And second, you need to give them enough time. Time to observe. Time to think. Time to go deep, to get stuck, to keep working through the problem even when the easy solutions don’t work.

When you create that kind of environment, real breakthroughs become possible.

Respecting Failure

It takes humility to stand in front of a system you helped create that’s not working and say, “I don’t know why.” But that’s often where the best ideas begin.

Failure, when treated with curiosity and respect, becomes a resource. It gives us data, perspective, contrast. It strips away assumptions and forces us to get clear about what’s really happening. In the ZLD world, where every process is complex, high-stakes, and chemically intense, failure isn’t just likely, it’s inevitable. The trick is not to avoid it, but to extract as much value from it as possible.

The ZLD Space-Time Lab was born from that idea: problems deserve our respect, because they carry the seeds of progress. That innovation isn’t a lightning bolt, it’s a process of narrowing the gap between imagination and reality. That breakthroughs come not just from vision, but from persistence, collaboration, and careful observation.

I feel lucky to work with people who are willing to stay with a problem for as long as it takes. People who don’t just look for what’s broken but imagine how it could be better. People who are willing to share their experiences, ask tough questions, and support each other through the uncertainty. That kind of culture doesn’t happen by accident. It must be built, protected, and practiced.

Let’s Work Together

If you’re in the ZLD space, whether you’re just starting out, trying to solve a specific challenge, or pushing the boundaries of what’s possible, we want to hear from you. The Space-Time Lab isn’t just an internal initiative. It’s an invitation.

An invitation to collaborate. To share ideas. To work through complexity, together.

Because real innovation happens not in the field alone, and not in the imagination alone. It happens in the space between. And with the right people in the right space, given enough time, anything is possible.