Read the latest news, innovations, and technology advances in water around the globe…
As reported in the Daily News Hollogram, at Andersen Air Force Base in Guam, specially trained Airmen are turning untested water into potable H2O, and training others to do the same. The United States Pacific Air Forces Command Silver Flag instructors from the 554th Red Horse Squadron train service members from US Air Force bases, other military branches, and different nations once each month on how to properly use the Reverse Osmosis Water Purification Unit (ROWPU) 1500. “Learning how to use the ROWPU is important because Airmen, particularly water and fuels systems maintainers, possess the organic capability to produce, store and establish a potable water source for self-sustainment and support purposes,” said Tech. Sgt. Roshia Johari, the 554th Red Horse NCO in charge of water and fuels systems maintenance contingency training. The purification process starts with detecting a viable water source, which can be fresh, brackish or even saltwater. As soon as a water source is established, crews connect two raw water pumps that push water from the source to the ROWPU 1500. The water then goes through three types of filtration: the first stage is a four-layer multimedia filter, the second stage uses a bag filter, and the third stage uses eight reverse osmosis elements. As water is moved through the filtration process, functional chemicals are used to purify and disinfect it. After the water has left the last stage of filtration from the reverse osmosis elements, the water is tested to verify that it is safe to consume. Since most water on Guam is considered clear water, the ROWPU 1500 is used primarily for training purposes. ROWPU’s... read more
As published in ArabianIndustry.com, Ethiopia and Kuwait signed a $22 million loan agreement to fund a clean and sustainable water project in Aksum, located in northern Ethiopia. The project will provide a clean and sustainable water supply to Aksum and its nearby villages until 2050, through the construction of a water supply and treatment system from Maychew River, about 30km south of the town, according to Saudi Press Agency. Ethiopia and Kuwait started a formal cooperation through avoidance of double taxation, investment protection, and sharing trade and science eight years ago. Kuwait has been assisting Ethiopia’s development through financial support for the implementation of infrastructure including road, airport, energy and water supply projects which are the major priorities of the African country’s government. Major components of the project include construction of a dam, reservoir, and water treatment plant, and other infrastructure work. Read the full story... read more
3M recently announced their latest ScaleGard HP Reverse Osmosis System. The new system provides greater RO capacity than previous generations, so that it delivers a faster supply of “Recipe Quality” water. The new high-production reverse osmosis (RO) filter produces up to 2.5 liters of RO water per minute. A pre-filter for chlorine/chloramines reduction is also included, and the option to add extra filters allows RO production to be doubled if required. The system also allows the user to adjust blending levels to optimize the mineral content of the water for consistent taste and scale reduction. The system can be wall mounted. 3M is targeting industrial, chemical/petrochemical, food and beverage and water quality control applications with this... read more
With California’s water supply about to run out, Santa Barbara is taking steps to reactivate a desalination plant that’s been in mothballs since 1992. As reported in the Los Angeles Times, the plant — built more than 20 years ago during another severe drought —was never used beyond a test phase before steady rain began falling. Now, officials are working to quickly get the plant back online as the city’s reservoirs continue to diminish. Experts say that California will run out of water in 2016. Santa Barbara will spend up to $40 million to modernize and reactivate the plant, which was closed in 1992. It is among a number of desalting projects being considered along the California coast, including in Huntington Beach, and Monterey Peninsula. The nation’s largest desalination plant is currently being built in Carlsbad, California. Although the Pacific Ocean looks like a natural solution to California’s water crisis, experts say a stampede toward desalination is unlikely. “It has two big disadvantages: It’s really expensive and it’s energy-intensive,” said Henry Vaux Jr., a UC Berkeley professor emeritus of resource economics who contributed to a 2008 National Research Council report on desalination. “Given the time it takes to come up with a plant, including permitting and construction, the drought will probably be over by the time it’s built,” said Heather Cooley, water program director of the Pacific Institute, a nonprofit that conducts research on natural resources. That’s what happened in Santa Barbara in the early 1990s, when construction began on the $35-million plant. At that time, communities were so desperate for water, Ventura even proposed towing icebergs down the... read more
California is running out of water fast, according to NASA senior water scientist. Shockingly, the entire state of California will be out of water in just a year’s time. Yes, California will run out of water in 12 months, according to Jay Famiglietti, NASA senior water scientist at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. As difficult as it may be to face, the simple fact is that California is running out of water — and the problem started before the current drought. NASA data reveals that total water storage in California has been in steady decline since at least 2002, when satellite-based monitoring began, although groundwater depletion has been going on since the early 20th century. Right now the state has only about one year of water supply left in its reservoirs, and the strategic backup supply, groundwater, is rapidly disappearing. California has no contingency plan for a persistent drought like this one (let alone a 20-plus-year mega-drought), except, apparently, staying in emergency mode and praying for rain. The drought means that total water storage in California, which has been in decline since 2002, has been sapped by the need to use the resource for farming, Famiglietti said in the Los Angeles Times. The use of groundwater for farming in the Central Valley has caused land to sink by one foot a year. Sprinklers and other landscaping accounts for 70 per cent of urban water use, according to the Sacramento Bee. Since 2011 the state of California has been losing 12 million acre-feet of water per year and the total amount of water in snow, rivers, groundwater and reservoirs was... read more
About 780 million people live without access to clean drinking water, and a growing global population coupled with climate change is threatening to increase that. Here’s how technology can help. Did you know 780 million people, or one in nine people in the world, live without access to clean drinking water? About 3.4 million die each year from water-related diseases. Those stats probably make you think about how often you accidentally leave the faucet dripping, or take too long in the shower, or even pour out a few Dasani bottles you never finished. Water security isn’t limited to access to drinking water. It’s about sanitation — more people worldwide have mobile phones than toilets, but Americans waste more water by flushing toilets than any other use, according to the EPA. And it’s about climate change — melting glaciers, rising seas, flooded coasts, and longer droughts. According to the United Nations, by 2025, 1.8 billion people will be living in water scarcity, and the demand for irrigation will jump by 15%. Though it’s not a silver bullet, technology can help to change this course, and it’s already starting to. Here’s how. 1. Many more start ups are tackling water problems The interest in water technology is growing amidst the concern over droughts, water shortage, and a warming climate. A San Francisco start up and accelerator, Imagine H2O, organizes and encourages innovations in the water industry to use technology to raise awareness about these issues and solve big water problems. Foundations and large corporations fund the projects by the non-profit, and Imagine H2O recently held a competition for new, empowering water projects. Big corporations like Coca Cola... read more
In the history of wastewater reuse, 2014 will probably go down as a landmark year, when direct potable reuse took off in the US. In November the San Diego city council voted unanimously for a multi-billion dollar plan to recycle over 300,000 m3/day of water. For all the media prompting about “toilet to tap”, when faced with the threat of prolonged drought and water restrictions, communities in Texas and California have proved to be happy to trust their water utilities to make the right decision. Last year saw a number of forward steps in providing alternative technologies, mostly involving new combinations of microfiltration/ultrafiltration (UF)/reverse osmosis (RO) membranes, which have been the mainstay of most advanced reuse projects to date. These have been driven partly by drought, but mostly by the lucrative contracts available for providing cheaper ways of dealing with wastewater resulting from new types of oil and gas exploration. Past wastewater reuse Most water reuse prior to the last decade was primarily of secondary quality for industrial or agricultural purposes. These will still provide major uses for lower grade reused wastewater. However, for potable and some industrial purposes, a high level of treatment is required. The techniques for potable water reuse usually involve membrane-based techniques such as UF and RO, and using ultraviolet (UV) light or ozone for disinfection. Lately, these are finding other applications in industry. Engineers and scientists are also finding new uses for other techniques such as electrodialysis, ceramic membranes and advanced oxidation in wastewater reuse. Potable reuse For potable purposes, the industry has split wastewater reuse into indirect (IPR) and direct (DPR)... read more
Welcome to Western RO. Our company is a supplier of Hydranautics, FilmTec, Ge, Toray RO Membranes and Filters. We have been in business for 4 years and are headquarter is in San Diego, CA. We ship our products globally all over the world including Mexico, South America, Canada, Australia, Middle East and... read more
Welcome to Western RO. Our company is a supplier of Hydranautics, FilmTec, Ge, Toray RO Membranes and Filters. We have been in business for 4 years and are headquarter is in San Diego, CA. We ship our products globally all over the world including Mexico, South America, Canada, Australia, Middle East and... read more
Welcome to Western RO. Our company is a supplier of Hydranautics, FilmTec, Ge, Toray RO Membranes and Filters. We have been in business for 4 years and are headquarter is in San Diego, CA. We ship our products globally all over the world including Mexico, South America, Canada, Australia, Middle East and... read more
Welcome to Western RO. Our company is a supplier of Hydranautics, FilmTec, Ge, Toray RO Membranes and Filters. We have been in business for 4 years and are headquarter is in San Diego, CA. We ship our products globally all over the world including Mexico, South America, Canada, Australia, Middle East and... read more
Welcome to Western RO. Our company is a supplier of Hydranautics, FilmTec, Ge, Toray RO Membranes and Filters. We have been in business for 4 years and are headquarter is in San Diego, CA. We ship our products globally all over the world including Mexico, South America, Canada, Australia, Middle East and... read more
Welcome to Western RO. Our company is a supplier of Hydranautics, FilmTec, Ge, Toray RO Membranes and Filters. We have been in business for 4 years and are headquarter is in San Diego, CA. We ship our products globally all over the world including Mexico, South America, Canada, Australia, Middle East and... read more
When you crack open an ice-cold beer, chances are you’re not thinking about climate change. But Tony Yanow is. Yanow is the co-owner and co-founder of Golden Road Brewery in Los Angeles, and like the 400 other craft breweries in California, he’s starting to feel the sting of the drought. Beer is about 10% grains, hops, and assorted flavorings. The other 90% is water. And when you’re brewing beer in California, where river basins are quickly drying up, that’s a serious problem. The drought is three years old at this point, but even though lawns are being left to die and fountains are shutting off, breweries are still producing lagers, IPAs, and stouts. (Beer is, after all, the third-most-consumed beverage in the world, so there’s plenty of demand.) But according to Tom McCormick, executive director of the California Craft Brewer’s Association, the drought has begun to tangibly affect breweries in major ways: It’s forced some to use lower-quality water in their brews or invest in expensive water-purification technologies, for instance, and it’s caused beer production costs to creep up thanks to the rising cost of water. At Golden Road Brewery, the question of what to do about the water has become a daily debate. The brewery will churn out more than 31,000 barrels of beer this year (one barrel is about 31 gallons). For every gallon of beer, they’ll use about four gallons of water—and that’s a conservative ratios for a craft brewery. If you do the math, that’s roughly 4 million gallons of water each year, and that figure doesn’t account for the amount of beer that’s spilled or the amount of water required... read more
With millions of gallons of water wasted daily by reverse
osmosis systems in the United States alone, it is no surprise that ZeroWaste technology
is coming to the forefront of the point-of-use (POU) industry. Watts Industries
of North Andover, Mass., is offering its ZRO-4 under counter system intended to
target the independent water dealer market. Even the best home reverse osmosis systems use four gallons
of water for every one gallon produced. This typically is obtainable only if an
Aqua-Tech permeate pump is used. Most systems waste as much as 20 gallons just
to produce one gallon of product water. The new technology called “ZeroWaste” eliminates
this problem by returning the concentrate water from the reverse osmosis system
back to the home’s plumbing, resulting in 100 percent efficiency. There are
several versions of zero waste available through various vendors but when
shopping around, keep in mind that many of these systems will not meet plumbing
codes. (The only known code-compliant process is the Watts Industries patented
technology.) The system allows for a “legal” cross connection between
the hot and cold water supplies, subsequently reintroducing the concentrate
into the hot water side. Here is How It Works The typical POU system (Figure 1) is a five-stage unit
utilizing three stages of pretreatment (one sediment and two carbon filtration)
then a TFC membrane and subsequent permeate and concentrate waters being routed
to both the tank and traditional drain connections. The ZeroWaste system (Figure 2) takes the water outlet of
the sediment and carbon filters and routes it through a solenoid valve and pump
before going to the membrane inlet. This provides filtered water to the
solenoid and pump, which will keep foreign material from damaging them. Carbon
block filters are preferred because they... read more
GE (NYSE: GE) introduced the latest in membrane-based wastewater treatment technology, combining anaerobic digestion technology with its ZeeWeed 500 membranes, resulting in the anaerobic membrane bioreactor (AnMBR). AnMBR offers the ability to generate renewable energy from industrial wastewater, reduce energy consumption and sludge production both economically and reliably. “GE’s most recent development in membranes unites our proven ZeeWeed reinforced hollow fiber membranes with anaerobic digestion technology to construct the new AnMBR. The future of water treatment has a new component and reinforces GE’s commitment to energy neutrality. Our industrial customers are yearning for more energy reduction in wastewater treatment, and GE’s AnMBR will give them a way to generate renewable energy from their wastewater,” said Yuvbir Singh, general manager, Engineered Systems—Water and Process Technologies for GE Power & Water. The technology is best suited for wastewater with high biochemical oxygen demand and chemical oxygen demand concentrations that result in higher expenses. “GE announces technology to generate renewable energy from wastewater “Power Engineering.Com”. 1/10/14 accessed. <http://www.power-eng.com/articles/2014/09/ge-announces-technology-to-generate-renewable-energy-from-wastewater.html >.... read more
FOUNTAIN VALLEY, Calif. — It used to be so final: flush the toilet, and waste be gone. But on Nov. 30, for millions of people here in Orange County, pulling the lever will be the start of a long, intense process to purify the sewage into drinking water — after a hard scrubbing with filters, screens, chemicals and ultraviolet light and the passage of time underground. On that Friday, the Orange County Water District will turn on what industry experts say is the world’s largest plant devoted to purifying sewer water to increase drinking water supplies. They and others hope it serves as a model for authorities worldwide facing persistent drought, predicted water shortages and projected growth. The process, called by proponents “indirect potable water reuse” and “toilet to tap” by the wary, is getting a close look in several cities. The San Diego City Council approved a pilot plan in October to bolster a drinking water reservoir with recycled sewer water. The mayor vetoed the proposal as costly and unlikely to win public acceptance, but the Council will consider overriding it in early December. Water officials in the San Jose area announced a study of the issue in September, water managers in South Florida approved a plan in November calling for abundant use of recycled wastewater in the coming years in part to help restock drinking water supplies, and planners in Texas are giving it serious consideration. “These types of projects you will see springing up all over the place where there are severe water shortages,” said Michael R. Markus, the general manager of the Orange County district,... read more
SHANGHAI, China — The Dow Chemical Company announced plans to invest in a world-class manufacturing facility for DOW FILMTEC™ reverse osmosis (RO) elements in Huzhou, China. The new facility will be online in 2013, according to a press release. “This investment is directly aligned to our growth strategy to maximize value as a leading science company, benefiting our customers in China and the China economy, while contributing to Dow’s global growth,” said Peter Sykes, president of Dow Greater China. “Dow Greater China is built on a solid foundation and we’re very confident about our ability to contribute to the China market and customer growth with a business focus which fits China’s 12th Five-Year plan.” The proposed facility would deliver local supply security of cutting-edge technology for water desalination and waste water reuse for potable, non-potable and industrial water serving China. The facility would also serve as a sourcing point for global demand, boosting supply of Dow’s world-class products worldwide. Additionally, these water technologies will deliver cost-savings through reduced energy usage and excellent operational efficiencies for global customers. The facility joins Dow’s ultrafiltration manufacturing facility in Huzhou and ion exchange resin facility in Qingpu, which supply global, market leading products. “Dow invests in manufacturing facility for DOW FILMTEC RO elements in China “Water Tech Online. Com”. 1/10/14 accessed. <http://www.watertechonline.com/articles/165352-dow-invests-in-manufacturing-facility-for-dow-filmtec-ro-elements-in-china>.... read more
