Water and Fluid Separation News

 The U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) announced a final rule to improve protections for workers exposed to respirable silica dust. The rule will curb lung cancer, silicosis, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and kidney disease in America’s workers by limiting their exposure to respirable crystalline silica. The rule changes the Permissible Exposure Limits (PEL) from the current levels of 100µg/m³ of air in general industry (250µg/m³ in construction) to 50µg/m³, averaged over an eight-hour shift. In addition, OSHA affirms in the rule the use of X-Ray Diffraction on silver membrane filters as one of two validated methods for detecting and quantifying airborne crystalline silica in the affected workplace environments.

Sterlitech silver membrane filters

Global distribution has begun for Aquaporin Inside Forward Osmosis Membrane, and Sterlitech is proud to announce it is one of the first to offer the breakthrough product. Developed by Aquaporin A/S of Denmark, the new membrane is specifically designed to reduce the costs of water purification by harnessing a remarkable mechanism found in all forms of life on Earth. “Aquaporin proteins make it possible for plants to draw water through their roots and for kidneys to filter wastes in our bloodstream,” said Sterlitech President Mark Spatz. “By synthesizing these proteins and incorporating them into a membrane, Aquaporin A/S has created a membrane product with uniquely high selectivity and flow rates.” Discovered in 1992 by Peter Agre, aquaporins are protein structures integrated into the cell membranes of all living organisms and are critical for controlling water concentrations.

We’d like to extend our congratulations to a young scientist, Alec Isaacman, who’s been making waves at California’s science fairs with his experiments with osmotic power.  Alec’s experiment, which was conducted in a fish tank his friend was no longer using, examined the effect salinity had on the production of osmotic power to determine the best locations in the world to place an osmotic power plant. The tank was divided into two chambers separated by a ACM5 RO membrane and were filled with equal amounts of water. One side was filled with fresh water and the other side was filled with salt water. Alec then determined the absorption rate of the salt water as it pulled fresh water through the membrane. The salt water was mixed to represent the three most common salinity levels found in the ocean: Polyhaline (18-29 parts per thousand), Mixoeuhaline

Aquaporin A/S and their Aquaporin Inside Membrane were featured last month in CNN's series, Make Create Innovate.  As you may recall from this article here, Aquaporin is a customer of ours which is working to perfect membranes made with aquaporins, a protein pore which is found in all living things and only allows water molecules to pass through it. In the video from CNN, we get to see the Aquaporin Inside membrane at work inside of an acrylic CF042 FO cell as it's used to draw water out of coffee.  This is a great video to watch if you want to see forward osmosis in action and check out an amazing innovation.  

For the past two years, California has been gripped in a historic drought, but things took a turn for the worse last month when measurements indicated 20% below normal precipitation levels and the worst drought conditions since record keeping began in the 1840’s. Governor Jerry Brown has declared a Statewide Drought Emergency and asked all 38 million California residents to reduce water use by 20%. Even President Obama has traveled to the state, offering Federal aid to those adversely affected by the drought. However, conservation may not be enough to ensure that there will be enough water in California to meet the demands of its population and industries in the long term.  California produces a third of the country’s vegetables and agriculture accounts for 80% of the state’s water use.  As California’s population continues to grow, and climate change threatens the state’s largest source of water, the annual snowpack on the Sierra Nevada, it falls to water technologies to help bridge the

The existence of suspended solids and colloidal materials in feed water pose one of the biggest problems in reverse osmosis systems. To help combat this issue, Sterlitech is adding new simpleSDI kits to supplement its existing line of automatic and manual silt density index testing kits from GE. The new kits are available in automatic and manual testing versions and utilize 47 mm diameter, 0.45 micron MCE membranes to measure the degree of potential fouling in an RO system. To view Sterlitech's entire line of SDI kits as well as supplementary information about SDI testing, click here.

The field of membrane technology is constantly changing and growing with new technologies to tackle new problems and introduce new capabilities.  TriSep Corporation is one the companies that is leading the way with its innovations, which they discuss in the December issue of International Filtration News Magazine. In TriSep's article, they introduce three new technologies:

• A line of high-temperature elements that are capable of continuous operation and periodic sanitation.
• TurboClean^® sanitary hard shell elements, which provides higher flow velocity and efficiency than traditional sanitary elements.
• The iSep^TM ultrafiltration membrane, the first

People do strange things for attention. Children throw tantrums, celebrities shave their heads and UNICEF builds a machine to take the sweat from your clothes and turn it into drinking water. UNICEF, at least, is trying to raise awareness of the lack of clean water for children with its unusual machine. Unveiled during the Gothia Cup, and built by Swedish engineer Andreas Hammar, the aptly named Sweat Machine works by using membrane distillation to separate water from other components of sweat. Unlike other membrane-based processes of water purification, such as reverse osmosis, membrane distillation is a thermally-driven process that employs a hydrophobic, microporous membrane. The water (or sweat) to be processed is heated, while the water on the permeate side of the membrane is kept cool. The temperature difference across the membrane creates a corresponding difference in pressure which pulls water, in the form of vapor, over to the permeate side of the membrane. Water’s naturally

Water, whether seawater or freshwater, is rarely just H₂O.  Dissolved nitrites and nitrates in particular play a key role in the survival of aquatic flora like seaweeds.  In 2005, Matthew R. McIlvin and Mark A. Altabet devised a now common method to analyze the isotopic composition of nitrogen and oxygen dissolved in water in the form of nitrates and nitrites.  The method, which can be found here, requires the removal of all organic matter in the samples. The Grade F borosilicate glass fiber filter, with fine porosity, medium flow rate, and a 0.7 micron size particle retention, is the tool of choice for removing organic matter from water samples.

A few weeks ago, James Cameron, director of Hollywood blockbusters "Titanic" and "Avatar," testified before the U.S. Senate's Oceans, Atmosphere, Fisheries, and Coast Guard Subcommittee, urging them to maintain federal programs aimed at oceanic research.  Although he is best known for making movies, James Cameron is also a deep sea explorer, reaching the bottom of the Mariana Trench in the Pacific Ocean last year, more than five miles below the ocean surface.  The data taken during that dive revealed new species of sea cucumber, worms, and amoeba, all of which are remarkable for their ability to survive in a such an extreme environment. These discoveries highlight the gaps in our knowledge of the oceans, despite the fact that they cover more than two-thirds of the planet's surface.  A large portion of the world's population live near the coasts and that portion is expected to grow as people migrate to coastal cities over the course of the next century.  Knowing the effects