Desalination & Water Reuse - All the latest Magazine Articles

Industry Interview - Dan McCarthy - From research to commissioning: how B&V has it all covered

Sat, 31 Jul 2010 17:00:01 GMT

With another prestigious water project opened in May in the shape of the 228,000 m /d Sembcorp NEWater Plant in Singapore, the list of references for major desalination and water reuse projects involving global engineers Black & Veatch in various capacities grows ever more quickly. John Gould, chairman of Faversham House Group and the publisher of D&WR, took the opportunity of a recent meeting to interview B&V Water's president and CEO, Dan McCarthy. This article first appeared in the May/June 2010 edition of Desalination & Water Reuse magazine.

KMS supplies first large-diameter SWRO system

Sat, 31 Jul 2010 17:00:01 GMT

The port facilities for Chile's Minera Esperanza copper/gold mine will soon be provided with drinking water from an innovative new seawater reverse-osmosis (SWRO) system supplied by Koch Membrane Systems (KMS). The system is the first full-scale large-diameter membrane RO system for seawater that KMS has developed. The system uses KMS MegaMagnum high capacity seawater membranes, made from a unique thin-film composite developed specifically for seawater applications. The original pilot operates at a rate of 20 m /h. Upon completion of the installation of the second phase of the project, this unit will be removed and will be replaced by the permanent RO system consisting of two new MegaMagnum MM2 units, which will provide the port facilities with a capacity to store about 80 m /h (1,900 m /d). This article was first published in the May/June 2010 issue of Desalination & Water Reuse magazine.

Trekkopje SWRO opened at Namibian uranium mine

Sat, 31 Jul 2010 17:00:01 GMT

The 55,000 m /d Trekkopje seawater desalination plant in Nambia was opened on 16 April 2010 in the presence of Namibia's minister of agriculture, water and forestry, John Mutorwa, and former president, Same Nujom. Designed and constructed by Keyplan, a South African specialist water treatment subsidiary of the Aveng Group, the Trekkopje seawater reverse-osmosis plant, in the heart of the Namib desert, turns Atlantic seawater into high quality potable water for use at the Trekkopje uranium mine operated by Areva Resources Namibia. The plant is currently being commissioned and has already produced high quality water. This followed a detailed environmental impact assessment, taking into account specific aspects of the coastline and potential carbon footprint of the operation. This article was originally published in the May/June 2010 issue of Desalination & Water Reuse magazine.

Boron nitride nanotube membranes outstrip carbon copies

Sat, 31 Jul 2010 17:00:01 GMT

One approach to improve the desalination process would be to design a more efficient membrane. Embedding nanotubes in the membrane is one area of research. Investigation of water transport through nanotubes in the past has primarily focused on carbon nanotubes, where the water has been found to flow extraordinarily fast in addition to rejecting salt ions.The Computational Biophysics Group at the Australian National University has designed one such membrane, constructed from an array of nano-sized tubes embedded in a silicon nitride membrane. The preliminary computational results have shown that, using the same operating pressure as current desalination methods, 100% salt rejection is achieved for concentrations twice that of seawater with the water flowing four times faster. This article was first published in the May/June issue of Desalination & Water Reuse magazine.

MEDVSA: a methodology for design of brine discharges into seawater

Sat, 31 Jul 2010 17:00:01 GMT

Desalination is increasing fast in Spain, especially on the Mediterranean coast. The brine generated in the process is discharged into the sea, producing a negative impact on the endemic and stenohaline marine ecosystems, for instance, the Posidonia oceanica and Cymodocea nodosa meadows. MEDVSA is an R&D project, subsidized by the Spanish Ministry of the Environment & Rural & Marine Affairs. IH Cantabria and CEDEX are collaborating in order to develop a methodology to improve the design of the brine disposed into the seawater, to guarantee the marine environmental protection. This article first appeared in the May/June 2010 edition of Desalination & Water Reuse magazine.

Southern California study identifies brine-concentrate issues

Sat, 31 Jul 2010 17:00:01 GMT

The Southern California Regional Brine-Concentrate Management Study is a collaboration between the US Bureau of Reclamation and 14 local and state agency partners, who together form the Brine Executive Management Team. The team identified the management of brine-concentrate from desalination and other water treatment processes as significant in addressing southern California's water supply reliability. As the amount of brine-concentrate waste increases, several implementational, regulatory and institutional issues present complex challenges to agencies. The USBR report says that there are a number of different elements that together formulate the regional landscape for management of these waste streams. This article sets out the report's findings. This article first appeared in the May/June 2010 edition of Desalination & Water Reuse magazine.

Going private is recipe for BWA's exceptional growth

Sat, 31 Jul 2010 17:00:01 GMT

The Chief Operating Officer of a company, who found life under a corporate umbrella was holding back its growth, explains how the senior management took the company private and watched it grow by over 50% in two years. Robin Wiseman spoke to the president and COO of BWA Water Additives, Paul Turgeon. This article first appeared in the February/March issue of Desalination & Water Reuse magazine.

Desalination must pay more attention to solar energy

Sat, 31 Jul 2010 17:00:01 GMT

The day is coming when membrane technologies for hitherto unthinkable purposes, such as rural water supply in Africa, will be competitive with the ever more difficult search for conventional supplies. The key element is energy, and these authors argue that renewable energy from the sun is not being given enough attention by governments, developers and consultants. To date, considerable research into renewable desalination has been done, but the potential benefits of using renewable energy systems do not seem to have been completely recognized and explored. However, governments, developers and consultants have to understand that the future of the desalination process will be closely connected to the integration of renewable energy systems. This article first appeared in the February/March issue of Desalination & Water Reuse magazine.

Navajo powerplant could be key to Sandoval BWRO

Sat, 31 Jul 2010 17:00:01 GMT

A Navajo tribal enterprise to colocate a gas-fired power plant could be a key element of a proposed desalination plant for brackish groundwater in New Mexico, USA. The plant is also looking at an annual revenue of US$ 4.6 million from selling waste residuals. The commissioners of Sandoval County gave approval for design work to start on the plant, which would be sited west of Rio Rancho in the Rio Puerco basin on 21 January 2010. Their approval was based on the findings of a preliminary engineering report, the purpose of which was to provide a comprehensive evaluation of the county's proposal to develop a wholesale water utility. It included an evaluation of various issues facing the County and presented a recommended action plan. This article was first published in the February/March 2010 issue of Desalination & Water Reuse magazine.

Solar pond and membrane distillation merger in Nevada University

Sat, 31 Jul 2010 17:00:01 GMT

Membrane distillation (MD) is a thermally driven membrane separation process that involves evaporation of volatile constituents (water in desalination applications) through a hydrophobic, microporous membrane. The vacuum-enhanced MD process recently patented by researchers at the University of Nevada, Reno in the United States has now been coupled with some equally interesting research at the university on solar ponds. The configuration is now being studied using a small-scale indoor pond and new capillary MD membranes. While MD has been studied in the past in conjunction with solar ponds, new membranes, new techniques and new auxiliary technologies are improving MD, solar ponds and their synergistic combination. This article was first published in the February/March 2010 issue of Desalination & Water Reuse magazine.

UF solution to rural water supplies?

Sat, 31 Jul 2010 17:00:01 GMT

Sub-Saharan Africa is not a region generally associated with membrane technology, but that is now changing. Desalination projects are already appearing in, for example, South Africa and Ghana, and South Africa is fast developing its own technologies. Water treatment manufacturer Ikusasa is developing its own UF modules both for rural water supply and for desalination pretreatment. The company is also developing its reverse-osmosis desalination capability and is currently looking at anodic Zn for scaling protection in treating high-calcium groundwater. This article appeared in the February-March 2010 issue of Desalination & Water Reuse.

Should we build any more MSF plants?

Sat, 31 Jul 2010 17:00:01 GMT

Multi-stage flash (MSF) evaporator technology was for a long time the most popular technology for large seawater desalination plants. However, MSF has had to face strong competitors in recent years. Reverse osmosis (RO) and multi-effect distillation (MED) are squeezing MSF out of the market. Is there really a future for MSF? This article looks at the technology's development, its costs, its capabilities and its modern relevance. It first appeared in the February/March 2010 issue of Desalination & Water Reuse magazine.

Intake and pretreatment considerations for Coquina Coast

Sat, 31 Jul 2010 17:00:01 GMT

While the attention of US desalination watchers has been focused primarily on Carlsbad and Huntington Beach on America's west coast, on the east coast, plans for a similar-sized seawater desalination plant have been moving forward with much less fuss. The Coquina Coast Seawater Desalination Alternative Water Supply Project proposes a 50-80 MGD (189,000 m /d - 303,000 m /d) desalination plant to serve a number of Florida's supply utilities. This article looks at the considerations for pretreatment and the alternatives for a seawater intake. This article appeared in the February/March 2010 issue of Desalination & Water Reuse magazine.

Algerian Desalination Market Developments

Sat, 31 Jul 2010 17:00:01 GMT

In the current market situation, where the financial crisis has frozen most project finance, Algeria maintains its commitments to develop a desalination infrastructure and continues to pursue a milestone program of desalination capacity building which sits among the most ambitious in industry history. By 2011, 13 seawater desalination projects with a total capacity of 2.26 million m /d will be developed in Algeria, contributing to what is probably one of the largest growths in national capacity in recent years. After the planned completion of the desalination program by 2011, the newly installed seawater desalination facilities will contribute about 70 L per capita per day to the drinking water supply of the densely populated coastal strip along the Mediterranean, where more than 90 % of Algeria's population lives.

Looking back on two years of change in desalination

Sat, 31 Jul 2010 17:00:01 GMT

At the start of Lisa Henthorne's presidency, at the Maspolomas Congress in 2007, the board of the International Desalination Association initiated a five-year Strategic Plan. Already parts of the plan, such as better public relations, membership growth, including a Young Leaders program, and the new IDA Journal are all up and running. D&WR asks Henthorne if she achieved everything she had set out to do.

Resort uses desalination in innovative reuse project

Sat, 31 Jul 2010 17:00:01 GMT

The Cache Creek state-of-the-art water reuse project in the USA is very interesting for its use of the Vibratory Shear Enhanced Process (VSEP) for brine volume reduction. However the use of Electrodialysis Reversal (EDR) desalination prior to this process is also of interest, and the project s award from the WateReuse Association (2009 Project of the Year Desalination Facility) confirms that this is a project worthy of a little more detail. This article first appeared in Desalination & Water Reuse s November/December 2009 issue.

PESU membranes in municipal water treatment applications

Sat, 31 Jul 2010 17:00:01 GMT

In his previous article (D&WR August/September 2009), Dr Maletzko dealt with the use of polyethersulfone (PESU) membranes in pretreatment systems for seawater reverse osmosis. Here he looks at applications for municipal water treatment and claims improved virus removal and twice the permeability of PVDF membranes. This article first appeared in the November/December 2009 issue of Desalination & Water Reuse magazine.

Perth provides world desalination sustainability model

Sat, 31 Jul 2010 17:00:01 GMT

As the USA finally starts its second large SWRO plant at Carlsbad, Australia is already into a second generation, with contracts let for the Southern Seawater desalination plant, the second to serve the Perth region. The author has for many years been a strong advocate of desalination and has promoted the technology around the world. Here he argues that the Perth plant is a model of sustainability that the industry should follow. In addition, the article lists 21 existing and potential large desalination plants in Australia. The author looks at future sustainable practices and argues that they must satisfy the triple bottom-line economic, social and environmental factors. The recent cancellation of Traveston Crossing dam provides a case-study of a project that did not do this. SWRO has the ability to meet these criteria, he argues. This article was first published in the August/September issue of D&WR magazine.

The coming of membrane distillation technology

Sat, 31 Jul 2010 17:00:01 GMT

Membrane distillation (MD) is a unit operation that uses hydrophobic membranes as a barrier for contaminated water from which mass transport of vapor is driven by differences in vapor pressure. MD does not require a mechanical pressure pump, and temperature levels are such that low-grade heat sources may be used to supply the required energy for the process. It is therefore ideal for treatment of industrial effluents and for desalination in co-generation with thermal solar power plants. This article assesses membrane distillation, a technology that the author believes is becoming increasingly relevant, particularly for use with renewable energies and in less developed countries. The recent promotion of the Desertec energy creation project in the Sahara is just one opportunity he sees for the technology.

Advantages of Polyethersulfone (PESU) membranes for pretreatment for SWRO applications

Sat, 31 Jul 2010 17:00:01 GMT

Membrane pretreatment for large-scale seawater desalination has grown rapidly in the last few years. Existing examples seem to show that the additional cost can be more than recouped in reduced chemical costs alone, but there are also environmental advantages. This article is the first of two discussing the advantages of polyethersulfone (PESU) membranes for filtration duties in water treatment. This article will start by considering general advantages of membrane use together with the reference and experience position, and then examine the particular benefits of PESU in terms of treated water quality. The final sections include a review of membrane pretreatment costs and environmental impact in comparison with conventional pretreatment technology. The second article, to be published at the beginning of 2010, will consider the advantages in using PESU membranes in municipal water applications.