BlueTech Forum is pleased to welcome innovative membrane technology company Water Planet to its Innovation Showcase, which is taking place in San Francisco on 1 June. Twelve companies will take part in the event, each representing a different aspect of innovation in water technology.
California-based Water Planet develops high-performance membrane-based water purification and separation technologies. IntelliFlux is the company’s core water treatment system – artificial intelligence based control system software that can be integrated with filtration equipment to help operators optimise backwashing processes.
Eric Hoek, Water Planet’s founder and chief executive says, “It’s no secret that the throughput of filters declines over time as fouling occurs. This means more energy is required to push the water through. Filter cleaning can be a costly process involving expensive chemicals or downtime – which is a real killer from the economic perspective.
“IntelliFlux can help reduce these costs and conserve water by automatically optimizing filter operating conditions in real-time. The control technology runs a filtration system using artificial intelligence, adjusting backwashing and cleaning in response to filtration performance.
“Our artificial intelligence based controls technology becomes smarter over time, factoring in variables like the time of day or seasonal fluctuations,” says Hoek.
Case studies
IntelliFlux was initially developed to run on Water Planet’s IMS-5000 oil-water separation system, but can now be used with any filtration system. The company, which started up in 2011, is already operating globally, with installations in the USA, Canada and Kuwait.
Delegates to BlueTech Forum will hear about two systems currently being installed in Canada’s northern Alberta oil fields and another for an oil service company in the US. The company is running pilot trials on produced water at an oil facility in Bakersfield CA, in partnership with Sweetwater Technology Resources.
BlueTech Research analyst Graeme Pearce says, “Filter fouling is a particular problem for produced water treatment in the oil and gas sector, so a technology that improves the efficiency and reliability of backwashing and cleaning operations represents a strong market opportunity.”
BlueTech Research chief executive Paul O’Callaghan says, “The oil and gas sector has experienced a slowdown in recent months, but the opportunities that will continue to open up are for technologies that save on operating costs and conserve water. The initial results we have seen suggest that Water Planet has a membrane technology that has significant unique selling points in the treatment of produced water and can help enable beneficial re-use of produced water, which we see as an area of growth and opportunity in the Oil & Gas sector.
Alongside the Innovation Showcase, BlueTech Forum 2016 is also hosting several Roundtable Briefings relevant to membrane technology, smart control systems and the oil and gas sector.
• Membrane Technologies
• On-line Sensors and Predictive Analytics
• Oil and Gas opportunities in a shifting landscape
BlueTech Forum is taking place on 1st June in San Francisco.
