A symposium is to be held in Japan in November 2013 centred on the Mega-Ton Water System, a national research program to develop sustainable water treatment technologies, including large-scale desalination, that have a low environmental load and are energy-saving and low in cost.
The Mega-Water System International Symposium will be held on 21-22 November 2011 in Tokyo with guest speakers from around the world.
The Mega-ton project is funded through the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science as part of the FIRST Program initiated by the Council for Science & Technology. It is led by Dr Masaru Kurihara, senior scientific director.
The project has been undertaking research and development (R&D) of core technologies for the world’s most advanced low-pressure reverse-osmosis (RO) membrane for seawater desalination, as well as system technology for a large-scale seawater desalination plant with a capacity of 1 million m3/d. Further R&D is being undertaken on an innovative sewage treatment system, which the project says “will cause a paradigm shift that converts the existing resource consumption system into a resource production system”.
During the symposium, it is expected that state-of-the-art water processing technologies will be introduced and discussions will take place on relevant market development trends, large-scale desalination plant technologies and the future outlook for water processing.
The following topics have been scheduled for discussion:
•Leading-edge low-pressure seawater desalination RO membrane elements
•Low-cost corrosion-resistant piping materials
•Energy-recovery devices
•The world’s highest performance pressure-retarded osmosis membrane systems
•Chemical-free desalination pretreatment systems
•Intelligent large-scale seawater desalination plant systems for a 1 million m3/d capacity
•Innovative wastewater systems.
Confirmed speakers include:
•Dr Kurihara, keynote speaker
•Prof Tony Fane, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
•Prof Enrico Drioli, University of Calabria, Italy
•Prof Benny Freeman, University of Texas at Austin, USA
•Leon Awerbuch, Leading-Edge Technologies, UAE
•Nikolay Voutchkov, Water Globe Consulting, USA
•Yang Shangbao, director general, Department of Resource Conservation & Environmental Protection, NRDC, China
•Paddy Padmanathan, CEO ACWA International, Saudi Arabia
•Miguel Angel Sanz, business development director, Degrémont, France.
No registration details are available yet. The project’s website is www.megatonwater.com.