This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project advances development of a novel process, RIX+MEM, to replace or significantly enhance energy efficiency and operability of membrane desalination. Current technology is limited by several factors including; scaling & fouling of the membranes, high energy costs and low percent recovery of desalinated water. The RIX+MEM process directly addresses these limitations and offers the following unique advantages: higher water recovery with up to 50% lower energy consumption; elimination of the need for anti-scaling agents; replacement or installation ahead of any membrane desalination process and process adaptation to extremely high salt concentrations. The key process innovations are ion exchange to reduce the pressure requirements for filtering through reverse osmosis membranes and reuse of the membrane reject stream to regenerate the ion exchange material.
The broader/commercial impacts of this research are to meet the increasing demand of freshwater in water starved regions and to provide unique treatment possibilities for industrial applications. The expansion of water resources will allow for growth and sustainable economic development in new regions. The development of viable wastewater treatment alternatives for highly saline wastewaters will lessen impacts on the environment and open new industrial applications. The potential market for this technology is extremely wide given the extensive use of desalination processes. The initial commercial target areas for the technology will be focused in two areas; (1) desalination for treating seawater for potable water supply and (2) industrial treatment of saline wastewaters generated from oil and gas well production activity.
This SBIR Phase I project, conducted by Advanced GeoServices, studied a novel process, RIX+MEM, to replace or significantly enhance energy efficiency and operability of membrane desalination processes. Current membrane technology is limited by several factors including; scaling & fouling, high energy costs and low recovery of desalinated water. The RIX+MEM process, developed by Lehigh University, directly addresses these limitations and offers the following unique advantages: higher water recovery with lower energy consumption; elimination of the need for anti-scaling agents; replacement or installation ahead of seawater and brackish water membrane desalination processes. The key process innovations are ion exchange to reduce the pressure requirements for filtering through reverse osmosis membranes and reuse of the membrane reject stream to regenerate the ion exchange material. The research results indicate a significant operational cost savings can be achieved with the RIX-MEM process. Lehigh University will be pursuing further commercial development of this process. The research also successfully identified a new process to treat wastewater with extremely high salt concentrations generated from Marcellus shale gas drilling activity. Our wastewater treatment process has potential to generate reusable water, reduce waste volumes and recover valuable minerals. Advanced GeoServices will be pursuing further commercial development of this process.
