Advanced Ion Exchange

Kelly McCurry, Director of Engineering for Orica Watercare, discusses the use of advanced ion exchange to remove dissolved organics and multiple contaminants in a single treatment step and keep operational costs low.

The following is an excerpt from a Q&A with Water Online Radio. Click on the Radio Player above to hear the full interview.

Water Online Radio: Tell us about the new MICO process and how it differs from MIEX.

Kelly: For more than ten years now, Oracle Watercare's been at the forefront of advanced ion exchange for water treatment, especially in the municipal market. What MIEX resin does especially well is it removes dissolved organics, which are precursors for disinfection byproducts.

One of the things that we've been trying to do for the last few years is expand our capabilities into overall problem resolution, especially the municipal industry.

What we've done is taken that MIEX resin technology foundation and expanded on it to include the ability to remove multiple contaminants using more than one ion exchange or absorption media in the same treatment step.

What's particularly unique about that is that municipalities often want to remove multiple contaminants and you typically need multiple treatment steps to do that, and multiple types of medias or multiple technologies.

What we've said is, “Look, if you've got organics and you might have hardness, or you've got arsenic or you've got bromide or you've got hydrogen sulfide or any number of things like that, we can treat those things in one treatment step.”

We're minimizing energy usage, we're minimizing footprint, so your operational costs go down, your capital costs go down, and it's a big step in municipal water treatment.

Water Online Radio: It sounds like the MICO process is quite versatile in handling a lot of different situations. Are there situations where it might be overkill, and it may be spending too much to solve a problem, or is it inexpensive enough, in overall installation and operation?

Kelly: One of the things that you gain with applying the MICO process is that you're actually simplifying both the treatment process, but you're also simplifying your capital expenditure, the infrastructure that you have to put in place to solve the same problem, and also your operational costs. Thinking of it from the standpoint of overkill? It's really quite the opposite. It's really simplifying and accomplishing the same objectives.

Water Online Radio: Orica just recently came out with a new MIEX GOLD resin. Walk us through that. What are the benefits of that product?

Kelly: Again, what we're doing is building on MIEX technology and how well it's been accepted in the industry. The MIEX GOLD is really a second generation MIEX DOC resin. What we’re doing is addressing certain applications where the MIEX resin has certain limitations…

Click on the Radio Player above to hear the full interview.