Technology news 15

Filtration+Separation May/June 2013

Underdrain Plates support filtration beds

Porex Filtration has developed Underdrain Plates to support sand and multimedia filtration beds in municipal, industrial, and residential water treatment processes.

Porex adds that these plates function like a ‘false floor’ allowing for maximum, uniform water flow-through in either direction without loss of filtering media. This enables automatic backwashing of the filtration system for improved bed regeneration and long system life.

Porex Underdrain Plates are claimed to offer durability, efficiency, and easy installation to water filter treatment systems.

Customised plate tooling and fabrication processes are also available.

Key benefits include that they can support bed depths of 20 feet or more, and offer overlapping edges (for leak free installations). Uniform distribution of back flush, to increase backwash efficiency, is also possible. The Underdrain Plates offer high strength, UV resistance and a long system life. Porex says that they are easy to install using multiple fasteners, and are NSF-61 material certified for drinking water applications.

www.porexfiltration.com

H&V wins Achievement AwardNanoWave® from Hollingsworth & Vose has been selected as the winner of the Roll Goods IDEA13 Achievement Award.

Three of the most innovative and successful new products in the nonwovens and engineered fabrics industries over the past three years were nominated in the Roll Goods category.

“We are especially pleased to receive the IDEA13 Achievement Award because the industry selected NanoWave after a period of online voting,” said Mike Clark, Division President-HESF, Hollingsworth & Vose. “H&V was founded on a patent and we are honoured to be recognised by our peers for our most recent innovation.”

NanoWave is an extended surface area, multi-layer filtration media for HVAC applications. H&V adds that using nano and coarse

fibre layers, NanoWave delivers 2.4 times the surface area of normal flat sheet media. The waved nanofibre layer allows for maximum mechanical efficiency with very low resistance, while more than doubling dust-holding capacity compared to standard synthetic media. A green product, NanoWave is composed of one polymer and can be incinerated to regain energy. NanoWave pocket filters achieve the highest filtration performance and deliver superior air quality. Other uses for NanoWave include residential filtration, liquid filtration and gas turbine intake air filtration.

IDEA13 Achievement Award recipients were announced during the IDEA13 International Engineered Fabrics Conference and Expo on April 23, 2013 in Miami Beach, Florida.

www.hovo.com

New membrane purifies tough-to-treat wastewaterGE has introduced a new membrane, the AG LF series, which can purify tough-to-treat water such as wastewater from industrial processes.

GE’s new technology is a low-fouling reverse osmosis (RO) membrane that resists degradation from water containing bacteria, colloids and other materials that foul and shorten membrane element life.

GE adds that it successfully pilot tested the new, low-fouling RO membrane in Asia. Customer experience with the AG LF membrane has shown the membranes require fewer cleaning cycles compared to conventional brackish membranes in tough-to-treat applications, such as steel production, power plants and plating processes. The new low-fouling membrane can reduce the time between cleanings by up to 50%, although actual results will vary with specific application conditions.

“Our new low-fouling RO membrane offers higher efficiency with less frequent cleaning cycles,

leading to extended life, lower operating pressure and reduced environmental impact. Now offered to our industrial and municipal customers around the world, this new membrane technology specifically addresses tough-to-treat water,” said Yuvbir Singh, general manager, engineered systems-water and process technologies for GE Power & Water.

With water scarcity and lack of fresh water in many regions, there is an increasing need to purify difficult-to-treat water so it can be reused in industrial applications, such as power plants and metals processing. GE claims that its new AG LF membrane can reduce the amount of harmful effluent wastewater that is sent to municipal sewage or to fresh water sources. It features a unique coating technology that improves cleaning cycles, reduces pressure and reduces friction on the surface of the membrane, making it resistant to organic fouling.

www.ge.com

FISE0313_technology news 15 06-06-13 10:56:50