Membrane distillation (MD) is to be used by IVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute and the Royal Institute of Technology, both in Stockholm, Sweden, for removal of a large range of contaminants in water and wastewater, notably pharmaceuticals, and also desalination discharges.
A full-size industrial demonstration plant will be delivered by Xzero AB, which has specialized in developing ultra-pure water technology for industry, especially the semiconductor industry. This industry presently has the highest demands on water purity, followed by pharmaceuticals and feed water for power plants.
The project aims to research the separation and concentration of different polluted waters using MD. The studies will involve both systems analysis and studies on purification technology, efficiency and energy consumption.
The technique has been developed over many years in lab-scale level and has proved to have great potential for certain problems. Xzero is the first company that has developed a full-scale system to be used for research and evaluation.
The project will evaluate the effectiveness of MD for various types of polluted water such as arsenic-contaminated groundwater, contaminated wastewater with pharmaceuticals, recycling of water from desalination plants and treatment of certain industrial wastewater.
IVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute is the coordinator of the project. Other partners are Xzero and KTH Energy Technology.