Innovative Solutions
The GT focus is innovation to provide solutions for water challenges in municipal, industrial and agricultural uses. A combined experience of over 50 years of research and innovation is reflected in a number of patents and successfully implemented projects that demonstrate GT abilities from problem and opportunity identification to commercially viable solutions.
GT bridges US technology with arid and semi-arid markets through technology transfer.
Atmospheric Aerostat Coalesce to Extract Water from Clouds to a Ground Reservoir
Glacier Technologies International invented a patented device and process to extract water from clouds for the supply of water-stressed regions with good quality water. The technology, called Atmospheric Aerostat Coalescer (AAC) is a zero-carbon technology. The technology coalescers micro-droplets of cloud water to large drops that fall under their own wait. Its coalescer was successfully tested at the laboratories of the University of California, Irvine. It produced a water yield of 250 liters per square meters of coalescers per day from clouds, compared to 10 by current fog net water collectors. AAC deploys vertically to the clouds and occupies a small footprint. It uses software to track the clouds and position the coalescers where the cloud liquid water content is the highest. GTI expects to pilot AAC technology in many locations including Southern California and the Sarawat mountains of Saudi Arabia. AAC successful commercialization provides water-stressed regions with a new renewable source of high-quality water using only renewable energy to retrieve its aerostat. AAC will help Saudi Arabia reach its goal of 10 million trees by 2030.
Fig 1. Innovative AAC Coalescer in inflated pad to deploy to clouds by aerostat. Efficient, WCE > 70% to commercialize.
Fig 2. Fog Water Collection, FWC, uses impact of micro-droplet on mesh strand. WCE <5%, did not commercialize for 60 y.
Fig 3. AAC technology uses rotational
vs impact forces
Fig 4. AAC R&D at UCI show WCE >71% vs current <5%
Fig 5. Aerostat deploys AAC coalescers to cloud to extract to ground reservoir
Salt Brine Capillary Crystallization (SBCC)
Challenge:
Disposal of brine from groundwater desalination plants in an arid environment.
Groundwater desalination plants normally reject 20-50 % of the water as brine in which the salt produced by desalination is concentrated. The brine concentration could be in the range of 6000-15,000 ppm TDS. The brine constitutes a disposal problem because it could seep to the aquifer supplying the groundwater and contaminate it. It is an unusable open body of water that is a hazard and could be a health problem and a trap to humans and animals. It is most commonly evaporated in large evaporation lakes which are normally either protected by fencing or infiltration is restricted by sealing the surface with expensive membranes. The cost of leveling the site, fencing it and preventing infiltration is very costly. The membranes degrade with time and are not necessarily a reliable solution.
The brine may also be pumped to a layer below the groundwater through specially drilled and constructed wells. This is also an expensive endeavor.
Solution:
The GT solution was to first concentrate the brine through a series of biological processes that produce sellable products, then when the concentration reaches over 250,000 ppm, evaporate the concentrated brine using the renewable energy of the environment. The location is an arid region with an excellent source of heat, strong winds, and rainfall less than 100 mm.
GT patented its Salt Brine Capillary Crystallization, designed a pilot, and erected and tested the pilot before a commercial scale unit was built and implemented. The solution was effective, practical, and much more economical in capital and O& M costs than other solutions.
Challenge:
A country was seeking diversification of its exports. It is located in an arid environment with extensive coastal flatlands.
An assessment of physical resources indicated the presence of extensive salt flats, locally called Sabkhas. Chemical and physical analysis of the salt flats indicated they were rich in salts, basically sodium chloride. Market analysis indicated the potential to produce and market salt as a potentially viable economic resource. The challenge was how to economically produce high quality salt that was environmentally friendly.
Solution:
A renewable solar energy pilot plant was designed to operate SBCC during the day only to save on storage, and a pre-feasibility study was conducted that showed promising outcome. A pilot was designed, built and shipped to the region for field testing and to generate field data for a comprehensive and bankable feasibility study. Rented diesel generators were used as a first step before purchasing the most expensive components the project, solar cells. This demonstrated its technical and economic feasibility, producing very high quality salt at very attractive cost.
Solar Desalination Greenhouse (SDG)
Challenge:
An arid area lacks the resources to desalinate water from its groundwater and is looking for an inexpensive and simple process to desalinate water from brackish and seawater.
Solution:
GT devised a renewable energy bio-desalination greenhouse, called Solar Desalination Greenhouse, (SDG).
The GT SDG is a neat device in that it produces desalinated water as a by-product. Its main energy requirement is blowing air that is heated by the hot sun of the environment, and pumping to circulate the cold water produced by dehumidification to a heat exchanger, located at the exit of the greenhouse, where dehumidification and condensation takes place. There is no lift so the pumping energy overcomes the friction of the pipe and the flow velocity. Both energy requirements are provided by the environment from wind and solar.
The GT SDG may use seawater. It is designed to grow a salt tolerant crop, to the level of seawater, and produce two products: a primary agricultural product that could be used as animal forage or an oil crop, and a secondary product; desalinated water.
The SDG has been piloted on a bench scale and proved to be technically successful and is in the stage to be tested on a commercial pilot in an area like the Salton Sea.
Innovative Collaborations
Challenge:
Radium groundwater reduction
In many arid regions of the world the groundwater is very old (over 30,000 years) as reflected by carbon dating. The groundwater had been in contact with radioactive rocks such that some radium has dissolved and contaminated the drinking water source to high levels of radium above the standard limit of 5 pico-curie/liter.
When water desalination membranes are used, such as Nano-membranes, radium is removed as it behaves similar to Calcium. However, the membranes are contaminated and so is the brine. The disposal of the membranes during maintenance and that of the brine constitute a major challenge.
Solution:
GT, in collaboration with a technology provider, designed and tested an absorption process where the radium is absorbed on the surfaces of solid particle and Radium is removed as a solid. The pilot was shipped to the country and GT sent technicians to erect it and test the radium removal. Complex situations develop when you ship chemicals to foreign countries but the challenge was met successfully and radium content was brought down to less than 1 pico-curie/liter. The process saves valuable water and captures radium as a solid for manageable disposal. The solution provided an economic solution and was adopted in large desalination plants.
Solution:
GT designed and successfully tested its High Recovery Zero Liquid Discharge (HRZLD) technology.
HRZLD aims to recover about 95% of the water feed. Depending on the quality of the water, the design uses a configuration of RO brackish and seawater RO membranes and Ion Exchange to either treat the brine after it is rejected from the desalination plant or design the total system with HRZLD technology included in new desalination plants. Each design is specific to a certain water quality.
Challenge:
Desalination plants lose 20-50% of precious water as brine. The Ministry of water in an arid country wanted to recover as much water as economically possible from its desalination plants that use groundwater as feed.
Solution:
Fog and clouds present an opportunity to increase water resources with good quality water. When performed at high elevations, it could provide additional benefits of reducing pumping costs, and avoid the expense and environmental challenges of the energy-demanding seawater desalination.
Fog and clouds are a source of good quality water that have not been tapped on a commercial scale. Attempts to rain clouds by cloud seeding have not shown convincing results. Water harvested by fog nets has proven beneficial for very remote locations requiring meager quantities of water. It relies heavily on volunteer work. The meager water quantities produced, large footprint and the high cost necessitate the innovation and development of a more commercially and economically viable approach to extracting water from fog and clouds.
Glacier Technologies is currently working on a project to extract water from fog and clouds commercially and economically. The project extracts water directly from fog and clouds into a reservoir, avoiding both contact with the soil and seepage or loss to the sea.
Glacier Technologies innovative water extraction from fog and clouds on commercial basis will be made available to the public and news media in 2017 after pilot tests are completed.
Challenge:
Drought has dramatically increased in many water-stressed countries and communities. The implications are dire as reflected by the World Bank 2016 report on water. California is experiencing its severest drought on record. Agriculture is under threat of its water being allocated to more financially rewarding uses.
