SBIR Phase II: Further development of the HAOPs water treatment process for membrane pretreatment and phosphorus recovery from wastewater

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project results from the advancement of a novel water treatment process that reduces membrane fouling and significantly lowers water treatment costs. Membrane filtration is one of the primary water treatment technologies to address the global challenge of water scarcity. However, the membrane industry suffers from low productivity and high operational cost caused by fouling. Over 95% of the water treatment plants in US that employ membrane filtration currently operate at only 30-50% of their design capacity. Our revolutionary pretreatment technology not only mitigates fouling, but also increases system productivity by up to 400% and decreases the required membrane cleaning frequency by a factor of 50, thereby saving water, money and energy. The process can reduce both the capital expense and annual operational cost of water treatment plants by roughly 25%. Our innovation is also applicable to saline water, so it can be used as a pretreatment for desalination, and it can address another major environmental challenge by removing phosphorus from wastewater and thereby reducing the prevalence of blooms of toxic algae. This SBIR Phase II project will continue our scale-up and commercialization activities for our pretreatment technology to improve the performance of membranes in water treatment processes with respect to contaminant removal, process productivity, and energy efficiency, compared to existing technologies. The process relies on application of a proprietary particle in a novel reactor and has been demonstrated in our Phase I work. The objectives of the Phase II work are (1) scale-up and construction of larger treatment modules using commercially suitable materials and fabrication processes; (2) testing under more aggressive operational conditions; (3) improving particle production, delivery, and disposal processes; and (4) evaluating the particles' suitability as an economic approach to remove and recover phosphorus from wastewater. The economic analysis will also be updated using data collected in Phase II study. The effort will advance the technical readiness level (TRL) of our process to TRL6, while providing essential data for further development and credibility for marketing. On completion of Phase II, we expect to be prepared for deployment in small-scale commercial systems treating one million gallons per day, and for testing in larger systems.