Who was at IDA 2009

Upen Bharwada, executive - business general manager, filters and membranes.
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As an attendee at IDA conferences over the last 20 years, Upen Bharwada can track better than most the shifting trends in the worldwide desalination market.

As executive – business general manager, filters and membranes, at GE Water & Process Technologies, Bharwada is at the forefront of the sector’s evolution. So what are the technologies that are driving the market today?

“I sense that there has been an ‘a-ha’ moment at IDA this week,” the GE executive says. “Whereas the real estate industry has the phrase ‘location, location, location’, this sector is recognising that the secret to managing seawater reverse osmosis (RO) as a unit process that delivers what it promises relies on the phrase ‘pre-treatment, pre-treatment, pre-treatment’. All of the challenges associated with making an RO membrane work are traced back or are endemic in the pre-treatment process.”

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Bharwada adds that there were two particular sessions during the course of the week that particularly caught his eye. One was on seawater intakes, which covered the mechanical technologies that assist with the understanding of micro-organisms, location of intake points and analysis of marine life.

Another was a session on pre-treatment for seawater RO ultrafiltration (UF) technology, which discussed the understanding of total organic carbon (TOC), turbidity of bacteria and other kinds of sub-micron organisms, which he believes will go a long way towards making UF the preeminent treatment technology.

With regard to GE’s own technologies, the emphasis appears to be on integration. “What we’ve done is take our UF technology and integrated it with RO, all in one unified design,” says Ralph Exton, GE Water & Process Technologies global sales executive.
 

“It’s a solution set that’s pre-engineered, pre-designed and on one skid. In today’s market you often can’t wait 12-18 months for a seawater RO system, but we’ve got solutions that we can deliver in less than half that time period. In some cases we have containerised systems that are on the shelf and ready to deploy.”

“On the equipment front, a number of our pre-engineered systems allow for a shorter lead time, so from start to finish our clients can almost have a plug-and-play option,” continues Bharwada.

“A truly integrated multi-unit process allows for a single control panel, one type of software and a true integration of synergies, and that’s what we’re introducing.”

The expert adds that for conventional older systems where the water chemistry has changed since the system was put in, GE has introduced cartridge filters that can assist when the pre-treatment for conventional media filtration malfunctions.

Lastly, the company is also introducing new chemicals into its analytical system portfolio. “So it’s not old wine and new bottles; we are either adding line extensions or delivering truly new products,” Bharwada says.