Instrumentation Training

Abstract: The primary purpose of this project is to investigate the engineering design process and use it to design a disposable water bottle for mass production that is aesthetically pleasing, structurally sound, market appropriate and financially viable. It is the intention that the water bottle, complete with branding, will go on sale in the Australian market. In the past decade bottled water has grown to become a major seller in the Australian beverage market. With many resources spent on the marketing and sales of a disposable water bottle, this project endeavor's to design a bottle tailored to its target demographic from the ground up. Largely in depth survey research from select focus groups within a target demographic will assure the accuracy of the specifications and the direct relevance to the intended consumer. An engineering design approach ensures that the bottle will not only be rigorously designed to heavily researched specifications but also computationally tested to guarantee the success of the completed product.

Abstract: During the half century of development from a laboratory discovery to plants capable of producing up to half a million tons of desalinated seawater per day, Reverse Osmosis (RO) technology has undergone rapid transition. This transition process has caused signification transformation and consolidation in membrane chemistry, module design, and RO plant configuration and operation. From the early days, when cellulose acetate membranes were used in hollow fiber module configuration, technology has transitioned to thin film composite polyamide flat-sheet membranes in a spiral wound configuration. Early elements – about 4-inches in diameter during the early 70s – displayed flow rates approaching 250 L/h and sodium chloride rejection of about 98.5 percent. One of today’s 16-inch diameter elements is capable of delivering 15-30 times more permeate (4000-8000 L/h) with 5 to 8 times less salt passage (hence a rejection rate of 99.7 percent or higher). This paper focuses on the transition process in RO module configuration, and how it helped to achieve these performance improvements. An introduction is provided to the two main module configurations present in the early days, hollow fiber and spiral wound and the convergence to spiral wound designs is described as well. The development and current state of the art of the spiral wound element is then reviewed in more detail, focusing on membrane properties (briefly), membrane sheet placement (sheet length and quantity), the changes in materials used (e.g. feed and permeate spacers), element size (most notably diameter), element connection systems (interconnectors versus interlocking systems). The paper concludes with some future perspectives, describing areas for further improvement.