Water. Desalination + reuse
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TECHNOLOGY 17-42% lower than RO and conventional thermal plants across all geographical areas and energy sources. WaTEr EffiCiENCY The SSI system is capable of a water recovery ratio of ~86% from seawater, significantly above the water recovery ratio from seawater of equivalent RO and thermal systems. This allows for a physically smaller core processor compared to other systems of equivalent capacity. CurrENT PiLOTs SSI is currently operating an industrial system pilot at its headquarters. The system pilot has validated the underlying technologies and has successfully treated a range of feed waters, including seawater, highly saturated brines, and dissolved hydrocarbons provided by oil and gas companies. For example, water with a contaminant level of 147,000 ppm total dissolved solids (TDS) has been reduced to 14 ppm TDS in a single pass through the core system. The SSI technology has also consistently removed greater than 95% of hydrocarbons from contaminated water. In addition, the innovative pretreatment process successfully removes hard scale-forming compounds to greatly reduce system cleaning and maintenance requirements. ONGOiNG iNNOvaTiON While SSI is currently focusing on water treatment, the company continues to invest in intellectual property to expand its energy and phase-separation technology | 36 | Desalination & Water Reuse | August-September 2012 High ENErGY-EffiCiENCY advaNTaGE Benchmarking results confirmed that the SSI platform significantly lowers capital and production costs compared with conventional technologies across all tested regions. For plant operators, lower capital and production costs can mean a positive bottom-line impact. A more effective desalination solution with lower energy-utilization limits and flexible energy choices provides greater operational flexibility and the potential for lower overall plant energy requirements. And by integrating multiple plant functions into a single robust system, even greater energy efficiencies can be achieved. Figure 4: Water Efficiency Advantage Sylvan source Thermal Performance The low energy-utilization of the SSI technology is a key to the significant production-cost advantages identified in the benchmarks. Figure 3: Cost Structure Advantage ing as y nc Low ENErGY-EffiCiENCY bENCHmarkiNG SSI also commissioned an independent analysis of energy efficiency for its technology, RO and thermal technologies. Energy-efficiency benchmarking was conducted with WCI, which has a strong international reputation and significant expertise in evaluating energy utilization, and SRI International. SRI has sufficient experience with SSI's technology to be able to independently validate the energy efficiency for the SSI platform. For this benchmark, plant configurations were chosen that were optimized for energy efficiency to establish a "practical energy limit" benchmark for the technologies. The practical energy limits for the respective technologies were: l SSI system: 3.58 kWh/m3 l RO systems: 2.3-2.8 kWh/m3 l MSF/MED: 10-17 kWh/m3 cie Effi re inc Reverse osmosis Figure 5: Energy-Efficiency Advantage portfolios. Expanded portfolios will extend the technology platform to markets such as chemical processes, energy management storage and biofuels. SSI has made a splash winning the Technology Idol contest in Rome in May, and with its current rate of innovation, the company looks forward to many more successes in the water treatment and broader industrial market segments. l