Water. Desalination + reuse
Issue link: https://fhpublishing.uberflip.com/i/670678
BUSINESS May-June 2016 | Desalination & Water Reuse | 11 | Eric Hoek, chief executive of Water Planet detect the algae bloom coming, they would simply shut the plant down and wait it out, so you would lose two, three weeks maybe a month of operation and that's revenue lost, because you're not producing water. "The more modern approach is to overdesign the pre-treatment by putting in some sort of flotation system that pulls the majority of the biomass off using air bubbles… The drawback there is you're filtrating 100 per cent of the water you're taking in from the ocean. Those processes are very energy intense, and you're paying for hardware that you might use only two, three or four weeks out of the year, so you increase the cost of the plant significantly because you're under-utilising those assets." Water Planet has tested IntelliFlux under such scenarios, with impressive results: "IntelliFlux understands the system is being stressed and instantaneously changes the operating conditions so they'll be a little dip in the production rate, then it will step back up and get back to the target for the overall throughput, by adapting and adjusting the backwashing and the cleaning. We've done it time and time again with every kind of simulated challenge that we can imagine, and now we're going to the field confident that this technology works. Not only can it recover fouled membranes if you put it on in a retrofit scenario, but in any installation, it's going to take those operational upsets and it's going to avoid that shutdown incident." Water Planet's second product, PolyCera, originated in Hoek's UCLA laboratory in 2005. This super-polymer has all the durability of a metal. Hoek explains: "It has unique electronic properties that give it a unique combination of extreme hydrophilicity and robustness. It resists fouling and behaves the way metals behave in terms of reactions with other chemicals – the kind of things we use to clean membranes when they get fouled, and chlorine, that we use to disinfect membranes, or steam. It holds up just like a metal would hold up." This means users can get all the benefits of a ceramic membrane, which can be run hard and cleaned harshly, for the much lower cost of a polymer. "That offers the ability to treat very challenging waters – municipal sewage, oily wastewater from industrial processes, water with a high salt concentration that needs to be clarified. In a lot of cases you would have to apply excessive membrane material and operate at very low flux. With conventional polymers, you would have to use much membrane area because you need to operate at such a low flux. Otherwise the membranes foul too quickly and you have too much downtime so the whole thing becomes uneconomic. "The alternative is to go with a really robust ceramic membrane system, which you can run hard, you can push a lot of water through and you can clean with really harsh chemistries. This is a great solution in many applications, but the trade-off is the up front capital investment you have to make for a ceramic membrane system could be five times higher than for a polymer membrane system. "It's the classic conundrum of high performance, high price niche technology versus relatively lower performing and affordable commodity technology. PolyCera really represents an revolutionary step change bridging the gap and extending the range of what you can do with a polymer membrane." PolyCera has been three years in development at Water Planet and as of July 1, launches officially. The business will then follow its sister, IntelliFlux, into sales and development mode. Hoek's team at Water Planet is clearly fizzing with ideas – have they got anything else up their sleeves? He laughs: "We have such a great team capable of creating so many innovations. People come to us all the time to develop new technologies, but we feel so passionate about IntelliFlux and PolyCera, we're just starting to make money, to throw a third thing into the mix right now may be too much." And as for Hoek himself, does he hanker for a return to the classroom? "I love my job, and this is what I'm doing right now. UCLA has been very kind and left open the possibility of my returning in the future, but I won't even think about that until we hit a few key commercial milestones at Water Planet." For now, Hoek seems to have the perfect combination of seeing ideas born in the research lab come to life in the business world. That's a powerful combination: the market had better watch out!