Energy Recovery launches new desal tech at IDA World Congress

San Leandro, Calif.-based Energy Recovery (Nasdaq:ERII) said today it is launching new technology that essentially doubles the workload of its latest desalination device.

The product was unveiled at the International Desalination Association World Congress 2009 conference, going on today through Nov. 12 on desalination and water reuse, Energy Recovery’s Chief Technology Officer Rick Stover told the Cleantech Group from Dubai, where the event is being held.

The so-called Quadribaric technology is to be embedded into the company’s Pressure Exchanger-300 line of rotary energy recovery devices, although the company currently doesn’t have any orders. It was successfully tested, starting in May, at an undisclosed plant in the Caribbean as part of the company’s development program.

Membrane-based reverse osmosis technology, which squeezes fresh water from seawater, has been considered too energy intensive of a process to be a viable energy supply (see Water woes prompt California to rethink desalination). But that’s changing with the advent of energy recovery devices, Stover said.

“The Pressure Exchanger uses ceramic materials to save energy in the seawater reverse osmosis or any reverse osmosis process,” Stover said. “It captures and recycles the energy in the membrane reject.”

The membrane reject is what is left behind after the pure water has been squeezed through the membrane.

“Our device claims that reject and returns it to the process,” Stover said. “The end result is up to a 60 percent reduction in the energy requirements of seawater reverse osmosis. At this point, it’s almost inconceivable to think about building one of these [desalination plants] without energy recovery.”

More than 7,000 PX devices have been deployed or are under contract to be installed at desalination plants worldwide. The company claims its PX devices reduce the carbon footprint of desalination, save more than 750 megawatts of energy, and reduce carbon dioxide emissions by more than 4.6 million tons per year worldwide.

With the new Quadribaric technology, PX units are expected to offer greater energy savings and environmental benefits, without adding significant manufacturing costs to Energy Recovery’s process, Stover said.

“It doubles the work the device can do and improves its efficiency, so we’re able to get more water out of a given device. It helps these processes operate at a lower pressure, and it has a longer life than previous ones,” Stover said.

The device is designed to last the life of the plant, or 25 years of continuous operation, and offers 15 percent higher throughput.

The company is also growing its manufacturing facilities at a larger site, about 165,000 square feet, across the street from its current approximately 28,000-square-foot location in San Leandro, to be its own supplier of ceramics, Stover said.

“We think our market is going to be for new plants because the industry is growing and the need for water is growing,” he said, adding that it is also possible to retrofit existing plants with the new technology.

Areas where the company anticipates rapid growth of reverse osmosis technology include Australia, North Africa, Israel, Spain, China, the Caribbean, and the United States (see Energy Recovery in China desal contract and IFC sees big market for H2O).

“There’s always a desire for bigger and better,” he said.

A typical modern desalination plant, varying by location, costs about $500 million to build, he said. Energy Recovery’s technology costs around 3 percent of that, Stover said, without disclosing the exact cost of the PX-300.

Stover said the company is expecting the PX-300 to overtake the PX-220, which hit the market in late 2002, as its flagship product.

The Southern Seawater Desalination Plant, outside of Perth, Australia, a good candidate for the technology (see Energy Recovery tech slated for new Australian desal plant). The plant is expected to generate 140,000 cubic meters (37 million gallons) of fresh water per day to residents of the greater Perth region.

The plant is being constructed by the Southern Seawater Alliance—a joint venture between Técnicas Reunidas Australia, Valoriza Water Australia, AJ Lucas Operations, and WorleyParsons Services. Stover said instead of needing 16 PX-220 devices, it would require 11 PX-300 devices, as an example.

Last week, Minneapolis, Minn.-based Dow Water & Process Solutions said its reverse osmosis technology is also going into the Southern Seawater Desalination Plant (see Dow’s reverse osmosis tech picked for Australian desal plant).

Stover said another major win for Energy Recovery would be a $300 million water desalination plant in Carlsbad, Calif., being developed by Connecticut-based Poseidon Resources (see Largest desalination plant in Western world gets go-ahead).

The facility is expected to produce 50 million gallons of drinkable water a day, making it double the capacity of the current largest U.S. plant and larger than any seawater desalination plant outside the Middle East. It’s been in the permitting process for about 10 years and recently broke ground, Stover added.

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