Biofuels and particularly ethanol, have received a dramatic increase in attention as an alternative fuel source as crude oil prices continue to rise. Ethanol may be produced from a number of feedstocks including sugar cane and corn. This paper explores the application of RO processes in producing process water for ethanol refineries in the US. T...

This paper focuses on the lessons learned from performing a series of tracer studies at the City of Kennewick's Water Filtration Plant which was recently retrofitted with submerged membranes....

This paper and presentation cover results on the ability of an electropositive filter to remove organic and inorganic debris (nanoparticles, silica colloids, humic acid, and polysaccharides) from ultrafiltration (UF) filtrate and quantify the resulting improvements to process performance from using the polished water to backwash the membranes. The...

This presentation will cover our work to date in developing and testing new membrane materials for use in pervaporation desalination applications. Our work has specifically targeted high TDS produced waters (TDS > 50,000 mg/L) as these are the most challenging for conventional membrane based desalination systems. This is relevant to brackish water ...

This paper describes a project that evaluated the physical and surface chemical properties of nanocomposite polymeric films containing imogolite nanotube. Research aimed at characterizing and quantifying the influence of nanotubes dispersion and alignment on the mass transport of water through nanocomposite membranes is presented...

Recovery of rare earth elements (REEs) from oil and gas produced waters could ease the United States dependence on China's current domination in REE production. Furthermore, NF separation practices could be implemented nationwide for extraction of REEs from wastewaters, which will contribute to the strengthening of the United States economy and ind...

The food-water-energy nexus hits close to home for the membrane technology community because of the clean water solutions we offer. Our research aims at the core of the nexus by offering an innovative solution that provides a new low-energy water source specifically to the agriculture industry. The advances made through our research will be applica...

Membrane surface properties play a key role in the separation processes specifically in membrane distillation and non-polar solvent separation from water. For oil/water separation applications, various surface wettability characteristics, like superhydrophilic-underwater oleophobic (Wei, Sun et al. 2017, Jiang, Chen et al. 2018, Zhang, Wang et al. ...

Membrane distillation is one of a few options that have been explored for desalinating oil and gas produced waters, particularly those with total dissolved solids (TDS) concentrations in excess of 50,000 mg/L. Many of the previous efforts in this area have been limited to studying simple electrolyte solutions composed of sodium chloride. In this pr...