Fresh Water From Clean Energy

Investment Opportunity: Through our ‘Essential Utilties’ Consortium we now offer a very unique package to world markets. Our system integrators have combined Aeronautica Windpower’s 225 and 750kW wind turbines with our Reverse Osmosis water desalinization plants. This combined system is perfect for island communities, developing markets, or high energy cost regions, and is pre-engineered to work together as a combined system in modular configurations. Using a proprietary technology that makes extra fresh water when the winds are blowing, our system uses water storage like a ‘battery’ to store the wind’s power - in the form of fresh water. Our system then prioritizes how the available wind energy can be used in running transfer and intake pumps in order to maximize savings. When no wind is available, the system instantly switches to grid power or an on-site generator. If excess wind power is still available after making extra fresh water, we put it back on the grid. Through AWD and our International Development Partners, we can offer Design/Build services only, or a complete, Turnkey operation that sells you water and excess power under water purchase agreements. We can provide a full range of services, including permitting, design, construction, financing and operations, maintenance and management functions.                                                              

Configurations Available in Modules of:

750 kW Wind/1,500m3/day Water

1,500 kW Wind/3,000m3/day Water

2,250 mW Wind/4,500 m3

Investment in the construction of new water supply and treatment infrastructure in emerging economies will become a dominant theme over the next decade.

 For more information E-Mail to jeff@wtsro.com.

WTS Desalination Plant Powered by Wind Turbines

WTS, Inc.has proposed a new fresh water production facility for an Island population off the coast of Africa.  The plant will be housed in a number of 40’ shipping containers to produce 4,500m3 of fresh water daily.  The plant will be powered by its own 750kW wind generator and backup thermal (diesel/bio diesel) generator, and tied to the island’s existing electrical grid for redundancy and continual operation for consistent supply of fresh water.  This arrangement of the desalinization plant, combined with its wind and thermal power plants, has been specifically sized in order to create a ‘modular’ configuration which can be duplicated in other areas of the country.  By using this modular approach WTS, Inc. can provide great economies for the islands in terms of scale and redundancy of design, inter-interoperability across multiple plants, cross-training of operating personnel and the supply of spare parts for immediate repairs.  The integral design also allows fresh water production to be increased during times of excess wind energy and stored, thus acting as a cost effective ‘battery’ for the wind energy.

RO Zero Liquid Discharge at Texas Golf Club

Water Treatment Systems, Inc designed and built a 1,000,000 GPD reverse osmosis based water treatment plant that will feature (nearly) "Zero Liquid Discharge" of the waste water concentrate from the RO systems. RO concentrate water that is to be discharged to a sewer system has been reduced to only approximately 28,000 GPD. That is a design recovery of greater than 97%. This is a very important development for the RO and also for the Golf industries.In many parts of the country, and indeed worldwide, golf course managers struggle with the problems of availability, cost or quality of water for irrigation of their golf course. "Reverse Osmosis has solved the problem of utilizing brackish ground water and many Golf Clubs have planned to purchase and install their own RO water treatment plants only to run directly into a very major obstacle. The problem is finding a suitable location to send the RO concentrate water and obtaining the necessary permits. RO concentrate water is considered 'industrial waste' by the DER and EPA." The lower the amount of RO concentrate, the smaller the problem is. Reverse Osmosis systems are currently desalinating brackish or sea water at dozens of gold course facilities in the USA and world-wide. The product water from RO systems is very good "irrigation" quality. These facilities discharge their concentrate water, usually about 25% of the feed water, to an appropriate and permittable location. For a one million gallon per day RO system, this can be 250,000 gallons per day. A great many golf course facilities that need to treat their available water do not have an approved location to discharge it to. The original design for the Texas Golf Course called for total liquid discharge with the use of evaporators as the final treatment phase. Evaporators are expensive both in capital and operating cost. But our client was fortunate to obtain permitting for approximately 5% of the concentrate thus eliminating the evaporation phase which saved about a million dollars". The WTS (nearly) zero liquid discharge design using membrane systems is a low cost opportunity for golf clubs everywhere.

Hackers 'hit' US water treatment systems

The alleged attack was made on a system that piped clean water to homes in Illinois.

Hackers are alleged to have destroyed a pump used to pipe water to thousands of homes in a US city in Illinois.

Hackers with access to the utility's network are thought to have broken the pump by turning it on and off quickly.

The FBI and Department for Homeland Security (DHS) are investigating the incident as details emerge of what could be a separate second attack.

Experts said the news revealed a growing interest in critical infrastructure by cyber criminals.

Information about the 8 November incident came to light via the blog of Joe Weiss who advises utilities on how to protect hardware against attack.

Mr Weiss quoted from a short report by the Illinois Statewide Terrorism and Intelligence Center which said hackers obtained access using stolen login names and passwords. These were taken from a company which writes control software for industrial systems.

The net address through which the attack was carried out was traced to Russia, according to Mr Weiss. The report said "glitches" in the remote access system for the pump had been noticed for months before the burn out, said Mr Weiss.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Iran's nuclear programme has been slowed by a virus targeting industrial control systems

Peter Boogaard, A spokesman for the DHS, said it was gathering facts about the incident.

"At this time there is no credible corroborated data that indicates a risk to critical infrastructure entities or a threat to public safety," he said.
Industrial action

The comments by the DHS prompted a hacker using the handle "pr0f" to claim he had access to the control systems for a second US water utility.

He posted a document to the Pastebin website which purportedly contained links to screenshots of the internal control systems for a waste water treatment plant in South Houston.

The hacker's claims about their ability to penetrate the control systems have yet to be confirmed or denied by South Houston's Water and Sewer Department.

In an interview with the Threat Post website, Pr0f said the hack of the South Houston network barely deserved the name because only a three-character password had been used to protect the system.

The attacks are the latest in a series in which different hackers and groups have targeted so called Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems. These specialised computer systems are used to control equipment used to filter water, mix chemicals, distribute power and route trains and trams.

One of the best known SCADA attacks involved the Stuxnet worm which caused problems for Iran.

There were reports that the malware crippled centrifuges used in the nation's uranium enrichment program. Iran denied the claims saying that it had caught the worm before it reached its intended target.

Earlier this year, security researchers who investigated ways to attack SCADA systems were persuaded to cancel a public talk about their findings because of the "serious physical, financial impact these issues could have on a worldwide basis".

Lani Kass, a former adviser to the US Joint Chiefs of Staff on security issues, said America had to start doing more work to understand attacks on critical infrastructure.

"The going in hypothesis is always that it's just an incident or coincidence," she said. "And if every incident is seen in isolation, it's hard - if not impossible - to discern a pattern or connect the dots."

"Failure to connect the dots led us to be surprised on 9/11," she said.

Investing In Water ETFs

Supply and demand forces dictate that the global water sector will witness growth and positive price support in the future, making the PowerShares Water Resources (PHO), the PowerShares Global Water (PIO) and the Guggenheim S&P Global Water Index (CGW) attractive investments. According to the World Resources Institute, consumption of water has been growing more than twice as fast as population growth. Demand for the essential commodity is expected to increase by more than 50% over the next 15 years in developing markets and by more than 15% in developed markets like the US. This demand in developing nations is emerging as incomes are rising and people are moving out of rural areas into more developed parts of their countries. In fact, a report by the United Nations indicates that nearly 50% of the world’s population currently lives in cities, and over the next 35 years, this number is expected to rise to more than two-thirds. Most recently, the world’s population broke the 7 billion mark and it expected to surpass the 9 billion mark within the next 40 years. Much of this growth has been, and will likely continue to be, witnessed in the developing nations of Africa and Asia. On the supply side, water scarcity and water stress has already prevailed in parts of Russia, China, and the US. Furthermore, the expected impact of Mother Nature’s doing -- more severe flooding and droughts -- is expected to curtail the supply of potable water. The world has a large amount of water; however, only 2.5% of it is fresh water, and a mere 33% of this fresh water can be used for agricultural purposes and human consumption. At the end of the day, a supply and demand imbalance in the most important commodity around the world prevails and is likely to continue to do so, setting the stage for an influx in investment into the sector on both the domestic and international stage.

Climate Change Could Increase 'Saltwater Intrusion'

Guest Blog By Andy Reid, Sun Sentinel, September 12, 2011 Summer rains can't wash away a growing underground threat to South Florida's water supply. Saltwater seeping in from the ocean keeps spreading farther west, threatening to foul underground freshwater supplies that provide most of South Florida's drinking water. "Saltwater intrusion" in South Florida has worsened through the decades as providing water and flood control for a growing population siphons away freshwater and allows more saltwater to seep into aquifers and well fields. Ninety percent of South Florida gets its drinking water from underground supplies, most from the Biscayne aquifer. Pumping too much water from underground supplies can allow saltwater to push in from the coast. Droughts can make saltwater intrusion worse as pumping to provide drinking water continues while rains don't come to replenish underground freshwater supplies. Now South Florida officials are projecting that sea-level rise due to climate change could increase the reach of saltwater that can make water from community wells undrinkable. That has city and county utilities along the southeast Florida coast exploring expensive alternatives, with costs passed along to ratepayers, to avoid getting cut off from freshwater. "It is still progressing westward," Hector Castro, Hallandale Beach public works and utilities director, said. "Eventually all coastal communities will deal with this in some way, shape or form." Hallandale Beach, Pompano Beach, Dania Beach, Lantana and Lake Worth are among local cities that in recent years have been most at risk from saltwater intrusion. But the line of saltwater spreading inland comes close to or reaches cities from Jupiter to Florida City, including West Palm Beach, Delray Beach, Boca Raton, Fort Lauderdale, Hollywood and Miami, according to theU.S. Geological Survey. Reducing well-field pumping, moving well fields farther inland and requiring utilities to pursue alternative water supplies have helped hold the line of saltwater intrusion in some areas and even push it back east. "It's a serious threat," said Pete Kwiatkowski, South Florida Water Management District water-shortage incident commander. "That saltwater front is very dynamic (and) it does shift." Six of the eight wells that Hallandale Beach relies on have been closed through the years due to saltwater intrusion. That's because 85 percent of the city is within the area where saltwater has seeped in, Castro said. As a result, the city pays to get half of its water from Broward County's western well fields and is working on a deal for new western wells of its own. Hallandale Beach proposes building six new wells and new water lines in West Park for about $10 million. Operating them over 40 years would cost about $36 million, Castro said. "Any given day, if we were to pull too much water … we could lose another well," Castro said. Instead of building well fields farther inland, some utilities build new water plants capable of tapping into and treating deeper, saltier underground water supplies. Lake Worth recently completed a $24 million reverse osmosis water plant to keep 5 million to 7 million gallons of water a day flowing, without threats from saltwater. Lake Worth also has stricter once-a-week landscape-watering limits intended to cut water use and help avoid saltwater intrusion. Rising sea levels are expected to add to the spread of saltwater intrusion, said Jennifer Jurado, Broward County director of natural resources planning and management. Man-made pollution produces more carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping greenhouse gases that capture the sun's heat, leading to climate change. Increased temperatures mean melting ice sheets and swelling oceans, projected to bring rising sea levels. South Florida sea levels rose about 8 inches during the past 100, but are projected to increase between 9 and 27 inches over the next 60 years, according to Jurado. That would lead to more saltwater forcing its way into freshwater supplies, she said. "Potable water supply is obviously a major concern long-term," said Jurado. Building water plants capable of converting ocean water into drinking water is one alternative that so far South Florida utilities have deemed too expensive. Making better use of regional water supplies could help beat back saltwater intrusion, said Ron Nunes, chairman of the Southeast Florida Utility Council, which represents water providers serving nearly 5 million residents. Flood control for cities and farms built on what used to be the Everglades leads to draining nearly two billions of gallons of storm water out to sea each day after a typical South Florida summer rainstorm. More of that storm water should be redirected to beef up groundwater levels depleted by decades of draining and paving land that once held water and naturally replenished the aquifer, Nunes said. "The biggest issue is the water is there and it is all going out to sea," Nunes said. "Why can't it be re-engineered to help keep the saltwater back?"

WTS Commissions .5 MGD RO For Golf Course Irrigation

Burlington, Iowa July 30 Water Treatment Systems, Inc, Boca Raton FL has commissioned a new reverse osmosis water treatment system at Spirit Hollow Golf Club in Burlington IA. The 500,000 GPD RO, manufactured by Water Management Group, Inc. will provide a consistent supply of irrigation quality water for the golf course. The design-build project was a result of successful teamwork performed by the owner, Spirit Hollow Golf Club, Water Treatment Systems, Inc and Water Management Group, Inc.
At times of low rainfall, which is an annual occurrence during the golf season in Iowa, the facilities back up source of water has been a brackish water well. At 2600 ppm TDS this water was harmful to the fairways greens and tees.

The new RO system provides a product water of approximately 100 ppm TDS which will then be stored in a natural pond. The blended pond water should reach approximately 400 ppm TDS before being pumped onto the golf course. “This water quality is considered to be optimal for the health and appearance of fairways, greens and additional landscaping” said Jeff Dunn, WTS, Inc. applications engineer.
A new building was constructed over the winter to house the equipment which consists of the .5 MGD membrane train and pre-filtration system.
Reverse Osmosis systems are increasingly chosen by Golf Course properties to reduce water costs while maintaining consistent irrigation quality water from sources otherwise unsuitable for irrigation or potable water use. The cost of operating an RO water treatment plant is often much less than the cost of municipal water or reclaimed waste-water, and better for the turf.
Water Treatment Systems, Inc. designs reverse osmosis systems for industrial and commercial applications and specializes in brackish and sea water desalination.