One thousand attendees turned up at Orlando, Florida for the fourth Membrane Technology Conference (MTC) hosted jointly by the American Water Works Association (AWWA) and American Membrane Technology Association (AMTA) last week.
Next year’s MTC on 1-5 February 2016 will be in San Antonio, Texas. The conference technical chairman will be Professor Andrea Achilli of Humboldt State University and Ben Movahed of WATEK Engineering will be the technical vice chairman.
Awards
The American Membrane Technology Association and the American Water Works Association announced for winners of awards at their Membrane Technology Conference last week.
Michael Vernon of Indian River County Utilities, Florida was the Robert Vernon Operator of the Year. The award recognises significant, long-term improvement in water production and/or water reuse.
San Elijo Water Reclamation Facility, California picked up the Membrane Facility of the Year award for use of membrane technology with high efficiency in an environmentally friendly approach.
Water Quality Person of the Year was Jorge Arroyo, former director of innovative water technologies, Texas Water Development Board. The award recognizes outstanding contributions to water supply improvement.
Hydranautics won the Membrane Exhibit of the Year awarded for the exhibition stand that best highlights the importance of membrane technology.
AMTA Member of the Year was Julie Nemeth-Harn, Harn RO Systems.
Dave Grunau, Aqua Design; Frank Leitz, Bureau of Reclamation; Melvin Lew, Office of Saline Water; and, Bill Katz, Ionics were inducted into the AMTA Hall of Fame.
Awards were presented for the best poster presentation and paper at the MTC conference. The best paper, best poster and best student paper winners each received US$ 1,250
The best paper prize went to “Groundwater replenishment performance and operations; lessons learned during clearwater’s one-year pilot” by Jennifer Roque, Tetra Tech.
The best poster was by Wayne Bates, Hydranautics: “Energy reduction at a municipal water plant in florida using RO/NF membrane technology.”
The best student paper was shared by Marjolein Vanoppen, University of Ghent for “Properties governing the transport of organic pollutants through ion exchange membranes using desalination of complex waste streams in ED” and James Liu, University of Washington, for “Moving fouling away from the membrane: microgranular adsorptive filtration and fouling isolation.”
The best student poster award of US$ 500 went to Amira Abdelrasoul, Ryerson University for “A mechanistic fouling attachment model for homogenous and heterogeneous membranes in ultrafiltration of latex solution.”
The AMTA board named the following as its directors for the coming year:
president – Scott Freeman, Black & Veatch
first vice president, Christine Owen, Tampa Bay Water;
second vice president, Lynne Gulizia, Toray Membrane;
treasurer, Greg Wetterau, CDM Smith; and
secretary, Karen Lindsey, Avista Technologies