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SEMINAR: CWR Presents:

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Today's date is Friday, March 29, 2024
CWR Presents: : Renewable Energy Powered Membrane Filtration for Water Treatment Other events...
The project is part of the vision ‘I have a dream: Safe drinking water for all children’. Each day about 4000 children die due to access to safe drinking water. Engineers have an important contribution to make to this problem through development of new treatment technologies, design of systems that are appropriate for rural areas and developing countries, and through robust maintenance and monitoring programmes. Membrane technologies – advanced polymer filters - are ideal for solving many of those problems where bacteria and viruses cause diseases such as diarrhoea, turbidity and colour makes water aesthetically unsuitable for consumption and many dissolved contaminants such as salt, arsenic, fluoride, uranium or pesticides cause immediate or longer term health problems. Those problems are avoidable through accessible, appropriate and robust filter technology. The challenge is to engineer a technology that is simple, robust and reliable and meets the needs of the end user. This requires interdisciplinary collaboration and persistence.

Through two projects in Africa, the ‘SAfe Drinking Water using Appropriate Technologies’ SADWAT-Ghana and SADWAT-Tanzania Leverhulme Royal Society Africa Awards engineers in Edinburgh collaborate with colleagues in Africa to develop appropriate technology. Those projects focus on the use of existing membrane technology (ultrafiltration (UF), nanofiltration (NF) and electrodialysis (ED)) to treat contaminated waters incorporating some local materials such as bone char and laterite using renewable energy to power the membrane systems. This approach will develop local capacity and business opportunity – and ultimately be a sustainable solution to water treatment in any developing country.

The seminar will give an overview of our work on this topic to date with a focus on the problem of physical chemical water quality issues, removal of inorganic contaminants from surface and brackish groundwater by nanofiltration and reverse osmosis, chemical speciation effects and the impact of energy fluctuations. The presentation is aimed at a general audience and hence suitable for colleagues and students from a broad range of disciplines. The project is carried out in collaboration with Prof Bryce Richards at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh and Collaboration suggestions are very welcome!

**** This seminar is free and open to the public, no RSVP required

****All Welcome****

Speaker(s) Andrea Iris Sch�fer
Location Blakers Lecture Room, Ground Floor, Mathematics Building, UWA
Contact Askale Abebe <[email protected]> : 6488 7565
URL http://www.see.ed.ac.uk/IIE/research/membrane
Start Fri, 25 Nov 2011 16:00
End Fri, 25 Nov 2011 17:00
Submitted by Askale Abebe <[email protected]>
Last Updated Wed, 23 Nov 2011 11:51
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