New 2016 product catalogue
PurePro has launched its new website. The website features all of our products listed in our new product catalog and features a comprehensive technical support area.
[ what is reverse osmosis ] [ RO advanced water treatment ] [ RO Renaissance ] [ water from source to tap ] [ water quality problem ] [ treating the water ] [ what make water hard ] [ why is RO better ] [ Japan Nuclear Crisis Affect Drinking Water ] [ 3 Great Reasons To Remineralize Your Pure Water ]
RO - Advanced Water Treatment
Here Today, Here Tomorrow
Summary: This article discusses several reasons for the current boom in advanced water treatment. In the forefront of this necessity will be a great need for water treatment professionals and their various skills. One thing is for sure -- the trend will continue into the distant future.
Waterborne diseases are still responsible for a great
number of human deaths on the planet. A March 2003
press release from the Water Supply & Sanitation
Collaborative Council, established in 1990 under a
mandate of the United Nations, states that lack of
"hygiene, sanitation, and a safe water supply ..
causes some three million deaths every year... and
that some 1.1 billion people are without access to
safe water supply." Most of the deaths are women and
children in developing countries.
Developed countries, including the United States, have
essentially eliminated the biggest waterborne diseases
such as cholera, typhoid and dysentery. This has been
the result of adequate sewage treatment and treating
drinking water by using conventional water treatment
technologies--clarification, filtration and
disinfection with chlorine.
During the last century, our understanding of
chemistry has grown dramatically. We've been able to
create hundreds of thousands of new organic compounds
such as solvents, detergents, pesticides, herbicides,
pharmaceutical drugs, plastics and many more.
Concurrent with the creation of new compounds in the
origin of waste products disposed in wastewater. Many
industrial and municipal waste products travel in
wastewater steams to the local sewage treatment plant.
In they aren't removed in the sewage treatment
process, they typically enter a surface water used
downstream by others as a source water supply for the
production of drinking water. There are a variety of
toxic substances in source water that can cause human
health problems. We now have an additional concern -
the deliberate contamination of drinking water to
cause disease and death. This is commonly called "bioterrorism".
Fortunately, the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency (USEPA), along with drinking water professional
everywhere, realize disease-causing contaminants must
be removed from our drinking water resources.
Increasingly, removal of pollutants requires advanced
water treatment technologies. Commonly used advanced
water treatment technologies include microfiltration
(MF), ultrafiltration (UF), nanofiltration (NF),
reverse osmosis (RO), electrodialysis,
electrodeionization (EDI), ionexchange, ultraviolet
irradiation and ozonation.
Many of U.S. military personnel around the world
primarily drink water that has been processed by
advanced water treatment technologies. The U.S. Army,
Navy, Air Force, and Marines all have high-tech water
purification units. The Army has mobile RO Water
purification units that can operate in nuclear,
chemical and biological warfare conditions.
High-tech water treatment is able to remove
essentially all unhealthy substances from naturally
occurring, disease causing microorganisms to
bioterrorism agents. Even contaminated seawater can be
purified into drinking water. Our continued creation
of contaminants drives an increasing need for advanced
water treatment both with drinking water and
wastewater. The use of microfiltration and
ultrafiltration technologies is growing at a fast pace
on the drinking water treatment side and use of
membrane bioreactors is growing on the wastewater
treatment side.
Table 1. Membrane materials demand | |||||
Millions of dollars |
Annual growth (%) |
||||
Item | 1998 | 2003 | 2008 | 03/98 | 08/03 |
Membrane demand | 1,190 | 1,785 | 2,678 | 8.4 | 8.4 |
Microfiltration | 626 | 860 | 1,175 | 6.6 | 6.4 |
Ultrafiltration | 197 | 329 | 530 | 10.8 | 10.0 |
Reverse Osmosis | 234 | 390 | 620 | 10.8 | 9.7 |
Pervaporation | 24 | 52 | 81 | 16.7 | 9.3 |
Other | 109 | 154 | 269 | 7.2 | 11.8 |
Membrane water treatment
As quality river, lake and well water resources are
depleted, less-desirable water sources must be
purified for use as drinking water and industrial
water needs. In California and Florida, as well as in
many other coastal U.S. areas, the ocean has become
the next water resource.
The Tampa Bay Desalination Plant in Florida became
operational last year and produces 25 million gallons
per day(17,400 gallons per minute), and was the first
large seawater RO plant in the United States.
California is looking into several plants with a
capacity of up to over 100 million gallons per day.
People don't just want drinking water, however. People
want many things that are manufactured, and
manufacturing processes increasingly require high
purity water. Almost all industries now require
high-tech water treatment. An example from a few
industries include:
Food (juice concentration)
Dairy (cheese production)
Beverage (beer, wine and soda production)
Health & beauty (hypoallergenic skin products)
Pharmaceutical (injected drugs)
Power generation (boiler feed water)
Semiconductor (microchip rinse water)
Power generation plants with high-pressure boilers
require water that's over a thousand times purer than
drinking water. Without extremely pure water going into
high pressure boiler tubes scale and melt due to the
high temperature of the heat source (over 1,000°F) and
the lack of cooling once scaling occurs.
Semiconductor manufacturing plants require water over a
million times purer than drinking water. The circuitry
on the most advanced microchips today is so small that
nearly 500 microchip "wires" could be placed on the cut
end of a human hair. If there are any contaminants
present in the ultrapure rinse water during manufacture,
the circuitry will electrically short. The purest water
on Earth is found in a microchip manufacturing plant.
MF and UF membrane products are increasingly being used
in drinking water treatment for the removal of
Cryptosporidium oocysts and Giardia lamblia cysts from
surface waters. Within the industry, MF and UF membranes
are used to clarify or concentrate many different
process streams and waste streams.
NF membrane are increasingly used for the production of
drinking water from well water sources. The NF
technology is used in an NF/RO sequential treatment for
making drinking water from seawater in Saudi Arabia.
There's a current pilot study in the United States to
determine the feasibility of NF/NF processing of
seawater to drinking water.
RO membrane are used wherever high purity water is
required. RO units followed by EDI units are common.
Double-pass RO units followed by EDI units and mixed-bed
ion exchange units are also common. Semiconductor rinse
water production plants may have over 20 advanced water
treatment steps including several membrane water
treatment steps to produce ultrapure water.
Conclusion
Membrane water treatment is booming. It will likely
continue to boom due to the expansion in the human
population, the increased level of contaminants in
source waters because of waste products generated by the
increasing population, and the decreased availability of
fresh water. The future is bright for water treatment
companies and individuals with the knowledge, skills,
and ability to meet the challenges and opportunities of
the 21st century.