Veolia Offers New Products To Cultivate New Water Sources

Emily Gilbert of Veolia Water Technologies talks about zero discharge desalination and other innovative treatment technologies that are reducing the impact of water scarcity.

Todd Schnick: We are coming to you live from Dallas, Texas. This is day one of AWWA ACE 2012 and Water Online Radio. I am Todd Schnick joined by my co-host Todd Youngblood. Todd, finally we have a lady.

Todd Youngblood: Finally. It’s about time. You look around and it is all of these tired old middle-aged guys like me.

Todd Schnick: Like you. I want to welcome to the show Emily Gilbert, who is a Membrane Product Manager with Kruger, a Veolia Water Technologies company. Welcome to the show, Emily.

Emily: Thank you very much.

Todd Schnick: It is a pleasure having you. Emily, before we get into a conversation, tell us about you and your background.

Emily: Sure. I am originally from Houston, Texas. I went to school at Texas A&M University and have a degree in chemical engineering. My husband is the Air Force and moved us to North Carolina, where I got involved with Veolia.

I started with them as a disc filter pilot manager, or pilot engineer, and moved on to England and did the same thing out there for Veolia over there. That is the good thing about being a part of a large global organization. You can move anywhere and they keep you employed.

I moved through disc filter side over to the pressurized membrane side about four years ago, and have been with the membranes for a couple of years now doing ultrafiltration, microfiltration, membranes, did some ceramic membranes, designed systems for a project out in Denver, Colorado, and work now on the ZDD technology. That is what I am here to talk to you guys about today.

Todd Schnick: Speaking of the large global organization, tell us a little about Kruger and Veolia.

Emily: Kruger is the municipal branch of Veolia for the United States. We specialize in unique, patented technologies for the drinking water and wastewater market. We have the ACTIFLO ballasted high-rate clarification technology, which has been our bread and butter for many, many years.

It was originally a Danish company. It started up originally in Chicago, but then we realized that we couldn’t golf in Chicago in the wintertime so we moved to North Carolina where we are based now, offering these unique technologies to the drinking water and wastewater marketplaces.

Todd Youngblood: Emily, I think you used the term ZDD technology. What the heck is that?

Emily: ZDD is Veolia’s unique technology that stands for zero discharge desalination. It is a combination of RO or NF membranes with an electro-dialysis system. The electro-dialysis system treats the brine from the RO or the NF and achieves a recovery of close to 98%.

It greatly decreases the amount of brine that needs to be disposed of from an RO or NF system. We have done some studies in New Mexico that showed we could achieve 98% on brackish groundwater.

That is definitely a water source that a lot of water-strapped regions of the country are having to look towards now that surface water and groundwater are becoming more and more scarce.

We need to start looking for these unique water sources such as brackish water. The ZDD technology allows you to install the RO systems and greatly decrease the amount of brine that you are producing from your systems.

Todd Schnick: We understand that Kruger is offering pretty cool ultrafiltration systems for drinking water production. Why is yours better than the competition’s?

Emily: Our ultrafiltration membrane incorporates the DOW membrane. It is a PVDF membrane, which is a highly chemically-resistant material. It is outside-inflow. It is an ultrafiltration membrane, so it has a much tighter pore size than some of the microfiltration systems that are on the marketplace.

It runs at very similar trans-membrane pressures to the other microfiltration or ultrafiltration systems that are available on the marketplace, with competitive operating costs compared to the others. The unique ultrafiltration PVDF membrane from DOW is what is incorporated in our system.

Todd Schnick: Emily, you guys have lots of different products in your product line. Can that membrane be used on various different systems, or is it limited to one new one?

Emily: No, that ultrafiltration membrane can be used for drinking water production. It can be used for tertiary wastewater treatment, phosphorus reduction, and it can also be paired with our ACTIFLO, which is our high-rate ballast and clarification technology that I mentioned.

We call that process the ACTIFLO MEM Process, which is ideal for DVP removal as well as surface water treatment. We can treat the very flashy surface waters at our ACTIFLO and provide very clean water to pass that on to the membrane and give a very stable operation across the membrane.

With selecting ACTIFLO MEM, you get Kruger taking on the full process responsibility. We can give process guarantees for the entire system, for the entire ACTIFLO MEM system.

Todd Schnick: Tell us about some of the new membrane products that Kruger is offering.

Emily: One of the newest technologies is the ZDD technology that I was mentioning, the zero discharge desalination. I think that is the one that we are getting the most excitement from at the moment. As I mentioned before, that is a combination of NF, typically, and NF270 or NF90, which are manufactured by DOW.

We have a configuration of those two membranes and an NF system upstream. The brine will be sent to our unique electro-dialysis metathesis system, which was originally designed by Tom Davis, who was with the University of North Carolina at the time.

We hold the patent and marketing rights to that ZDD technology now. We have been piloting at Alamogordo, New Mexico, and have had some good results there. We are about to start a study here in Colorado partnering with HDR on that at the Brighton and La Junta water treatment plants.

We will be treating the RO brine from the existing RO systems as well as testing with the RO feed-water and sending it to our NF pilot and then incorporating that with our EDM system. That is the most exciting new membrane that I would say Kruger has for the U.S. market.

Todd Schnick: Emily, you are talking about an awful lot of new product and new technology and there has to be new methods and systems to support all of that. If I am an engineer in a water treatment plant I have enough to do without learning about all of this new stuff coming down.

How do you help folks sort through all of the new things that are coming and what is really applicable and valuable for a specific company?

Emily: That is a good question. We work a lot with the engineers, the HDRs and the CDMs in the community. We work a lot with them to determine what product fits the best. We work with those end users in training them on these new technologies and taking away the concern over going towards a new technology.

A lot of people if they think about membranes they think complicated, they think a lot of difficulty in operating the systems. If the systems are designed with the operator in mind it should have very little operator intervention required to operate these membrane systems.

We work a lot with the engineers to decide which system is best for each of the municipalities and to make sure that the operators are comfortable with the technologies that they are installing at their sites.

Todd Schnick: Let’s shift focus for a second and take a 10,000 foot view of the industry as a whole. What trends do you see coming down the pipe over the next three to five years?

Emily: We are seeing a lot of regulations from the EPA that are requirements to start looking at these emerging EDCs as well as pharmaceutical products that might start to be regulated by the EPA.

I think RO and other membrane technologies will be applied more to drinking water treatment here in the future to address these concerns in our drinking water – these potential carcinogens that the EPA is starting to regulate.

We will see more and more reverse osmosis as our available surface and well waters start to dwindle. We’ll see more brackish water treatment, which is where we think the ZDD is going to be an ideal technology to be treating these new water sources that we are having to utilize as our water sources dwindle.

Todd Schnick: Emily, I hate to say it but we are out of time. Before I let you go, how can people get in touch with you and where can they learn more about Kruger?

Emily: You are free to call me at 919-720-3166. That is my cell phone and that is the best way.

Todd Schnick: Okay, we have 20 million listeners, so that might be a lot of callers. Okay, Emily Gilbert, Membrane Product Manager at Veolia Water Technologies, it was so great to have you.

Emily: Thank you very much.

Todd Schnick: That wraps this segment. On behalf of our guest Emily Gilbert, my co-host Todd Youngblood, and all of us here at Water Online, I am Todd Schnick and we will be right back