Water. Desalination + reuse
Issue link: https://fhpublishing.uberflip.com/i/107143
RESEARCH How pharmaceuticals accumulate in reuse recharge basins Research in Arizona has thrown more light on what happens to pharmaceutically active compounds (PACs) in reused wastewater which is used for groundwater aquifer recharge via a recharge basin. Clinton F Williams and JET McLain from the US Arid-Land Agricultural Research Center studied soils at a 28.3 ha facility in Gilbert, Arizona, designed to recharge 15,150 m3/d through recharge basins constructed on native soil. In a paper to be published in the Journal of Environmental Quality (September/ October 2012), the researchers say they targeted their research on ibuprofen, caffeine, carbamazepine, and lincomycin. These compounds can be influential in the build-up of antibiotic resistance in the population. In an article summarizing the research, the US Society of Agronomy quotes Williams' reaction: "You can look, and you can find these compounds everywhere at very low concentrations. But I'm mostly interested in what we saw happen with carbamazepine. There's something going on at the surface and that's what I want to figure out." Understanding the low carbamazepine concentrations at the soil surface holds the answers to processes responsible for degrading PhACs leftover from wastewater. Funding for 10 new NCEDA desalination projects announced Australia's parliamentary secretary for sustainability and urban water, Senator Don Farrell, announced ten new innovative desalination research projects which will benefit from the 4th funding round for the National Centre of Excellence in Desalination Australia (NCEDA). CEO Neil Palmer said there had been a focus on renewable energy solutions, with one of the projects proposing to use geothermally heated groundwater to power desalination. Projects funded in previous rounds have included solar-powered desalination and innovative use of waste heat generated from large-scale minerals processing. "Further reduction of the energy consumption of desal plants and fast-tracking new green technologies will continue to reduce the carbon footprint of the Australian water and desalination industry and make us more competitive internationally," Palmer said. A further Aus$ 4.9 million (US$ 4.82 million) of in-kind contributions and Aus$ 535,000 (US$ 527,000) in additional funding from participating organisations and research participants will bring Aus$ 8.1 million (US$ 8 million) of new investment into Australian desalination research. EPA funds low-cost desalination R&D The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has awarded more than US$ 79,000 from its Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program to Okeanos Technologies LLC of Covington, Kentucky, to develop a low-cost desalination system. Okeanos is developing a desalination system that uses Ion Concentration Polarization (ICP) elements and modular arrays and EPA wants this developed to produce potable water at off-grid, remote, developing, and/or disaster stricken areas. New reports from the WateReuse Research Foundation Six research reports were announced on 17 July 2012 by the WateReuse Research Foundation covering water reuse and desalination topics. They are: l Reclaimed Water Desalination Technologies: A Full-Scale Performance and Cost Comparison Between Electrodialysis Reversal and Microfiltration/Reverse Osmosis (WRF-08-17) l Water Reuse 2030: Identifying Future Challenges and Opportunities (WRF-06-017) l Investigation of Membrane Bioreactor Effluent Water Quality and Technology (WRF-06-007) l Guidebook for Water Reuse On-Site Inspection (WRF-04-009) l Potential Infectivity Assay for Giardia lamblia Cysts (WRF-08-18) l Interagency Partnerships for Water Reuse (WRF-06-021) Geothermal energy for desalination? The University of Western Australia (UWA) announced on 6 June 2012 that researchers at the university will investigate the use of geothermal energy to desalinate groundwater in Western Australia (WA). Professor Klaus Regenauer-Lieb, director of the WA Geothermal Centre of Excellence at UWA, said it was the first phase of a feasibility program to investigate and encourage use of geothermal and waste-heat resources for heat-driven pretreatment and desalination of brackish and saline water. The National Centre of Excellence in Desalination Australia (NCEDA) provided Aus$ 125,000 (US$ 124,000) funding for the project. Graphene can double desalination flux say MIT pair The use of nanoporous graphene as a desalination material has received further research support, this time by two researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). In their paper Water Desalination across Nanoporous Graphene published on 5 June 2012 in Nano Letters, the American Chemical Society journal, PhD candidate David Cohen-Tanugi and Professor Jeffery C Grossman claim that their results indicate that the water permeability of nanoporous graphene is several orders of magnitude higher than conventional reverse-osmosis membranes and that the material may have a valuable role to play in water purification. The MIT pair state that nanometer-scale pores in single-layer freestanding graphene can effectively filter sodium chloride from water. Using classical molecular dynamics, they label desalination performance a function of pore size, chemical functionalization and applied pressure. The increase in water flux comes at the expense of less consistent salt-rejection performance, which the MIT pair attribute to the ability of hydroxyl functional groups to substitute for water molecules in the hydration shell of the ions. August-September 2012 | Desalination & Water Reuse | 47 |