news

12/02/16

Second Workshop of TRANSFOMEM Project in Cuevas del Almanzora desalination plant

11th Febrary 2016 Cuevas del Almanzora (Almería) received to master students of hydrology and Hydric Resources Management from Alaclá university (UAH) and Rey Juan Carlos university (URJC).

The Master program completes the student formation in “Water Technology topic” with a visit of the Cuevas del Almanzora desalination plant, which is belonging from a agriculture community and it is managed by the U.T.E SADYT and Talleres and Grúas González. This workshop is annually carrying out by the master organization. However, it was conducted also a specific lesson regarding end-of-life membranes and the transformation process. During the session, they could see end-of-life reverse osmosis (RO) membranes and three pilot plants: one pilot for membrane characterization and cleaning; and the passive and active pilot plants for end-of-life RO membranes transformation. 

Links

http://www2.uah.es/master_universitario_hidrologia/

http://www.agua.imdea.org/

http://www.sadyt.com/

http://www.valoriza-agua.com

03/02/16

LIFE TRANSFOMEM project progresses well

Last 21st January, representative staff from #TRANSFOMEM consortium attended to the Annual meeting at Cuevas del Almanzora #desalination Plant. The main objective of this meeting is to evaluate the progress of the project in term of actions and chronogram.

Nowadays the laboratory phase of the project has been completed, except to provide technical support to the demonstration project (membrane autopsies). To develop the pilot-scale actions, the project has a stock of 60 #end-of-life reverse osmosis #membranes of different #desalinationplants (all from Spain) and diverse #fouling (organic, inorganic, colloidal, biofouling). Some of these end-of-life membranes during their operating life were treating seawater and some others membranes were treating seawater. 25 membranes have been characterized (in terms of permeability and rejection) and selected for different types of #recycling (transformation into nanofiltration and/or ultrafiltration membranes) through the two pilots plants (active and passive pilot). Preliminary results of the pilot scale assays are promising. They seem to correspond to the main conclusions obtained at the first phase of laboratory, already completed.

So far, the results have disseminated in scientific journals such as Journal of Membrane Science and Desalination (submitted). Some of the TRANSFOMEM researchers have attended to international conferences such as IDAWC2015 and RecyclingExpo 2015. Indeed, it has been posted a total of 48 different news or press releases in 19 different media and online magazines (i-agua, FuturEnviro, Retema, Aguasresiduales, blog del Agua, Interempresas, etc). A homemade video has been done in order to explain how we open the end-of-life membranes for fouling evaluation and samples extraction in an autopsy (see video). All these results (and newsletter, poster, etc.) are available on the project website.

02/11/15

Internal workshop. PhD student and other researcher staff

Last friday an internal workshop was conducted in IMDEA Water to show the goals achieved during 2015 regarding most of the research lines. @TRANSFOMEM Project had three oral presentation with Laura Rodríguez, Javier Rabadán and Raquel G. Pacheco who showed results at lab and pilot scale.

Visit our Flickr gallery to see some photos https://www.flickr.com/photos/135719731@N08/

16/10/15

MemEOL: Membrane end-of life tool

A team of researchers at UNSW Australia (the University of New South Wales) has recently created the MemEOL tool. As one of the outcomes of a recent project funded by the National Centre of Excellence in Desalination Australia (NCEDA), this membrane end-of life (MemEOL) tool is aimed at promoting better practices in the desalination industry by helping users identify and select the optimum end-of-life option for their used reverse osmosis (RO) membranes. This dynamic and interactive educational tool uses inputs on membrane condition and the relative importance of a number of key criteria to provide recommendation and further information about available end-of-life options.

Access the MemEOL Tool  http://www.desalwiki.che.unsw.edu.au/w/index.php/MemEOL_Test