Low Cost Large Scale Water Filtration

Sustainable Urban Development Workshop @ NASA Ames 

This presentation describes a novel and highly scalable technology for conventional water treatment. Features include: high throughput, purely fluidic, continuous flow, size-selective method for particulate extraction without a physical barrier; and accelerated aggregation kinetics from mixing and transporting chemical coagulant and raw water in confined channels. Together, the combined effects allow for in-line coagulation, flocculation, and immediate hydrodynamic separation of pin floc. This integrated approach using both spiral mixers and spiral separators eliminate flocculation and sedimentation steps, resulting in significant savings in capital cost (reduced land area, equipment, and infrastructures), and operations and maintenance cost (50% reduction in chemical use, low energy, and faster processing time from raw to finished water). This technology is also directly relevant to many other applications including: industrial water purification, waste water reclaim, power plant cooling tower, pre-treatment for RO, and almost any instance where reduction of TSS loading prevents clogging and extends the time between cleaning for many MF and UF membranes.