Harry Futselaar

Ultrafiltration used as pre-treatment for SWRO desalination: dynamic coagulant control under extreme conditions

Abstract The increasing global needs of individuals, communities, industries and countries cause a worldwide stressed water infrastructure. The new AquaFlex ultrafiltration (UF) technology addresses these emerging circumstances by delivering a water purification technology for municipalities and industries worldwide to secure their future potable and process water requirements. The concept is specifically designed for the treatment of seawater, surface water and polishing of effluents. The newly upgraded AquaFlex UF system combines the vertical design of Pentair X-Flow’s AquaFlex inside-out technology with the advantages of a minor bleed flow across the membrane surface as well as a module with a larger surface area. This allows your system to be designed with higher flux rates and a reduced footprint, thus providing the flexibility to treat a broader range of feed water qualities. In order to achieve a stable operation of the UF process in-line coagulation is often used. The application of in-line coagul...

The anaerobic MBR for sustainable industrial wastewater management.

Abstract Anaerobic high rate processes are considered cost and resource efficient solutions for treating wastes and wastewaters. Referring to the global current “energy discussion,” anaerobic conversion processes recover “organic waste enclosed energy” to the gaseous energy carrier CH4, whereas no energy is required for stabilizing the waste organic matter. Considering the ongoing trends in industries to reduce specific water consumption, and thereby drastically changing the process water characteristics, membrane bioreactor (MBR) application opportunities are expected to grow in the future. Compared to aerobic MBR technologies, anaerobic MBR (AnMBR) systems do have the same energy benefits as all other anaerobic systems with regard to treatment of organic pollutants, but do also create an absolute barrier for the biomass. By using ultrafiltration membranes, both the dissolved and nondissolved organic matter are retained in the bioreactor preventing that they will leach out with the effluent or digestate....

Direct sludge filtration: sustainable municipal wastewater treatment

Abstract After the successes of ultrafiltration (UF) capillary membranes in well water, surface water, seawater and wastewater effluent polishing, a new membrane concept is introduced that is capable to treat sludge from the biological reactor directly. The technology is called “direct sludge filtration” and is simple, clean and maintenance poor. Based on the successful 0.8 and 1.5 mm hydrophilic polyethersulfone (PES) UF membranes, a unique 3.0-mm capillary PES UF membrane has been developed. Using this membrane it is possible to filter water with suspended solid levels up to 15,000 mg/l (15 g/l). The new membrane is mounted in a complete new system layout for a significant reduction in footprint, building time and process complexity. This plug-and-play compact package design offers a flat slab erection without a lot of civil works reducing capital expenses importantly and is very suitable for (decentralized) wastewater treatment. In this paper, two examples of membrane bioreactor system (MBR) projects i...