GE expands licensing for water treatment knowhow

The High Efficiency Reverse Osmosis (HERO) system helps industrial customers increase their water usage efficiency.

GE announced it has completed a new expanded licensing agreement that will allow the company to continue offering High Efficiency Reverse Osmosis (HERO) systems to help more of its industrial customers increase their water usage efficiency and reuse capacity as the international community works to address mounting shortages of clean water.

GE has a long history of supplying HERO-based systems to customers that need reliable and cost-effective supplies of ultrapure water for production and wastewater recycling. The new pact with Debasish (Deb) Mukhopadhyay, HERO’s process developer and patent holder, allows GE to feature HERO in even more of GE’s growing portfolio of advanced water and wastewater treatment solutions, the company said in a statement.

Compared to conventional reverse osmosis (RO) systems, HERO offers higher recovery of feed water, higher production rates, higher product water quality levels and reduced scaling and fouling.

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“Our new agreement with Deb Mukhopadhyay reflects GE’s commitment to support the development and commercial deployment of HERO and other clean water technologies to help customers around the world address its mounting energy and water resource challenges,” said Jeff Connelly, vice president, engineered systems—water and process technologies for GE Power & Water.

Under the agreement, GE will hold specific rights to market and manufacture solutions that utilise the HERO technology in key industry segments and applications including:  mobile water treatment, the hydrocarbon processing industry and in microelectronics to name a few.

The HERO process involves operating a RO system at a pH level of 8.5 or higher in conjunction with any combination of two or more of the following process steps in any order: hardness removal, alkalinity removal and dissolved gas removal.

“This agreement allows GE to offer unique technology to handle such high pH feedwater streams, enabling HERO to produce the ultrapure water required by numerous manufacturing processes around the world, supporting local economic growth in these regions,” Connelly said.

HERO patent holder Mukhopadhyay is a chemical engineer with nearly 40 years of experience developing industrial water/wastewater treatment processes. Other industrial end-users of the HERO system include power plants, petroleum refineries and chemical/petrochemical manufacturers.

Mukhopadhyay has a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering and master’s degree in environmental engineering. He worked for several international companies for 20 years before deciding to start his own business developing new treatment processes in 1991.