Water. desalination + reuse

May/June 2013

Water. Desalination + reuse

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RESEARCH Wave-energy desalination pilot moves forward Work is now starting on the wave-energy desalination demonstration pilot plant being undertaken by Carnegie Wave Energy on Garden Island off the west coast of Australia. The project has been awarded a Aus$ 1.27 million (US$ 1.31 million) grant from the Clean Technology Innovation Program. The plant will be directly powered offshore by hydraulic energy from a Carnegie Ceto wave-energy system. The aim is to demonstrate that Ceto desalination technology has the potential to significantly and sustainably reduce the amount of electricity consumed, and hence the associated greenhouse gas emissions produced, by desalination plants. " Work has already begun on advancing the design and securing approvals for the desalination project, as well as planning for its integration into delivery of the Perth Wave Energy Project," said Carnegie's CEO, Dr Michael Ottaviano. The Ceto desalination pilot will be co-located with Carnegie's Perth Wave Energy Project (PWEP) on Garden Island, integrating off-the-shelf reverse-osmosis desalination technology with the PWEP infrastructure. Key initial tasks ahead of construction include completing detailed design, securing environmental approvals, negotiation of a water sales agreement and, if possible, the integration of the construction and commissioning of the desalination pilot with the delivery of PWEP. Grant support for UK graphene membrane research Graphene researchers at the UK's University of Manchester have been awarded a £ 3.5 million grant that could bring desalination plants, safer food packaging and enhanced disease detection closer to reality. Funded by the Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council, the research focuses on membranes that could provide solutions to problems such as stopping power stations releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere or detecting the chemical signals produced by agricultural pests. The latest research grant comes just months after the university was awarded £ 2.2 million to lead research into graphene batteries and supercapacitors for energy storage. The research is led by Prof Peter Budd of the School of Chemistry. He said: "We have also invented a range of polymers – called Polymers of Intrinsic Microporosity (PIMs) – which form membranes that are very good for separating gases and organic liquids. These are of interest, for example, for removing carbon dioxide from power station flue gases, or for removing organic compounds from water. "By combining PIMs with graphene, we expect to produce membranes with even better performance under long-term conditions of use," Budd added. Graphene was first isolated in 2004 at the University of Manchester by Prof Andre Geim and Prof Kostya Novoselov. Their work earned them the 2010 Nobel Prize for Physics. Finnish group claims lower cost of nano membranes A technology to manufacture nanoporous membranes at "significantly lower" production costs was announced at the end of March by the Department of Energy & Materials Science at Arcada University of Applied Sciences in Helsinki, Finland. The Arcada research group has used a variation of the track etch method which in the past has given greater control over the pore sizes of membranes. "Our starting point in the development of new manufacturing technology for nanoporous membranes has been to significantly reduce production costs," says head of department Dr Mikael Paronen. "Our research group has been exceptionally open to exploring alternative manufacturing methods, and in this context we have benefited from combining our experiences and the scientific literature." Arcada's newly developed technology permits production of membranes that can filter substances from water based on their size or chemical properties. It is partly based on the track etch principle, but a minor modification has transformed production economics to make it cost-effective. MBR, EDR and RO test at Russian refinery A pilot test of the use of membrane bioreactor (MBR) technology for treatment of wastewater from the BashneftUfaneftekhim oil processing complex and other enterprises around Ufa in Bashkortostan, Russia, has been launched by GE and Russian oil company Bashneft. Strict discharge regulations, and the need to reuse the treated water, led Bashneft to choose GE's MBR, electrodialysis reversal, reverse osmosis and adsorption onto activated carbon for the pilot testing. The use of a set of cutting-edge purification methods enables implementation of a closed-cycle principle and the minimization of water intake requirements. A distinctive feature of purification based | 30 | Desalination & Water Reuse | May-June 2013 on the GE technological process is the absence of preliminary clarification tanks and secondary clarifiers. At the exit from the aeration tanks, the activated sludge is separated from treated water using ZeeWeed 500 ultrafiltration membranes. Dehydration of oil sludge, precipitation and excess sludge is performed with compact centrifuges.

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