Engineers' Society of Western Pennsylvania

Location

337 Fourth Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA 15222

Phone: (412) 261-0710 Email: eswp@eswp.com Get Directions

Workshops

Thursday, November 16; 8:00 AM – 12:00 Noon

W-1A: Water Treatment 101 (repeat from Sunday)
Dennis McBride, Burns & McDonnell, Kansas City, MO

This workshop is a great introductory course covering many of the basic concepts of industrial water treatment. It will address unit operations (clarification, filtration, lime/soda ash softening, iron and manganese removal, membrane filters, and roughing demineralizers) used in water preparation for industry with emphasis on power, chemical industry, and refineries. It includes treatment of cooling water systems as well as boiler water makeup. Wastewater generated by these unit operations and their treatment and disposal will be discussed. Basic water chemistry requirements for low, medium, and high pressure boilers will also be discussed.

 

W-14: Concentrate Management for Industrial Desalination
John Korpiel, P.E., Veolia Water Technologies, Wexford, PA

This workshop will provide an overview of the options for managing the concentrate generated from industrial desalination processes and their associated challenges. The workshop is intended for engineers, technologists, managers, and operators who want to gain a better understanding of concentrate management, but will also serve as a refresher for those who already have experience in this area.

As fresh water sources become increasingly scarce throughout the world, industries are becoming more reliant on desalination technologies to operate in a reliable and sustainable manner. Desalination technologies are essential in industrial applications for treating challenging water and wastewater sources to generate a quality of water that is suitable for process needs and for meeting regulatory discharge water quality requirements. However, all desalination technologies generate a brine byproduct, also referred to as the concentrate or reject stream. Typically, brine has undesirable characteristics such as high salinity, high scaling and fouling potential, is corrosive, and contains concentrated contaminants and/or residual chemicals. As a result, brine is challenging and costly to concentrate, handle, treat, and dispose, and can be harmful to the environment, if not managed properly. A major challenge of applying any desalination technology in a cost-effective and sustainable manner is implementing an appropriate concentrate management strategy.

The following topics will be discussed in the workshop:

  • Overview of brine management options available for disposal and beneficial reuse, including surface water discharge, deep well injection, evaporation ponds, land application, and zero liquid discharge (ZLD)
  • Strategies for brine minimization using conventional and proprietary membrane-based technologies for
    minimum liquid discharge (MLD) applications
  • Thermal technologies for reduced liquid discharge (RLD) or ZLD applications; the latter of which
    eliminates the brine stream, generating a solid byproduct that is suitable for disposal in a landfill or for
    beneficial reuse.
  • The benefits, issues, and limitations of each of the brine management options and technologies
  • Examples of integrated MLD and ZLD systems will be presented
  • Emerging technologies for brine minimization
  • Factors to consider for evaluating the options and selecting the appropriate concentrate management

 

W-16: Electrodeionization
Alex Tabora, Evoqua Water Technologies , Lowell, MA

Electrodeionization (EDI) is a hybrid of two well-known processes, ion-exchange deionization (IX) and electrodialysis (ED). It was developed to allow the production of deionized water without the use of the hazardous acid and caustic that is required to regenerate ion exchange resins. EDI is now over 30 years old and is used extensively in many industries, especially in the production of deionized water for pharmaceutical formulations, power generation and manufacture of microelectronics/semiconductor devices. It is usually employed as a polishing demineralization step with reverse osmosis (RO) upstream as the roughing demineralizer.
This workshop will start by reviewing the principles of the EDI process, how it differs from IX, how EDI modules are constructed, and EDI feed water requirements. It will then focus on practical aspects of EDI system design, operation, maintenance and troubleshooting. This is an introductory course that requires no prior exposure to electrodeionization or electrodialysis. Some prior knowledge of basic water chemistry will be helpful.