More Florida Counties Look To Sea Water Desalination

Sea Water Desalination is the future. And the future is now in Florida. Officials in several Florida counties are in the early stages of planning for a project to desalinate sea water in order to augment ground water supplies. A partnership involving Flagler, Volusia and St. Johns counties would create a 20 million to 50 million gallon per day water treatment plant. The plant is expected to be operational in 2017.

"This would be a regional seawater desalination plant designed to serve multiple communities," said Richard Adams, public works director for Palm Coast in Flagler County. Once a plant becomes operational, it will be a valuable tool in helping the fast growing part of the state meet its future water needs.

The partnership includes the Lake County cities of Mount Dora and Leesburg; Palm Coast and Brunnel; Flagler and St. Johns Counties and the Dunes Community Development District.

The cost to produce water at the proposed plant is estimated to be $3.70 to $4.25 per thousand gallons. This is within the range of $2.10 to $5.80 per thousand gallons for other desal plants around the world. (These numbers are for municipal WTPs.  Water Treatment Systems, Inc commercial industrial desal systems generally operate at about $2.00 per thousand gallons).

"Our challenge right now is to determine the size of the plant and who the customers are going to be,: Adams said. "We have an excellent design team that is quite confident about making progress with this project".

New Sea Water Solution From Koch Membranes

Koch Membrane Systems, Inc. (KMS), a pioneer in membrane technology filtration systems, engineering, and process expertise for close to half a century, announces its new solution for large capacity seawater reverse osmosis (RO). KMS' new seawater solution will feature pre-engineered packaged plants up to 2 MGD as well as larger, modular building blocks for higher capacity requirements of up to 50 MGD.

Featuring a lightweight, large diameter pressure vessel-element combination, the new offering will utilize KMS' MegaMagnum PLUS seawater elements. This low-cost seawater solution offers the first economically attractive large area alternative to the older 8-inch technology.

According to Imran Jaferey, KMS vice president of water and wastewater, "KMS was the first to pioneer larger capacity RO elements and currently has the greatest global installed base of these high performance products. Our experienced and knowledgeable staff will be working closely with design and engineering firms around the world to demonstrate our new cost-effective seawater solution."

SOURCE: Koch Membrane Systems, Inc.