3d Round-Table; 2nd Industrial Driven Event
Organised by TOO "Membrane Technologies, S.A."
June 21-22, 2010, Astana, Kazakhstan

Regular working meeting within the scope of the MemBridge project activity was held in Astana on June 21-22. The main theme of the meeting was the development of ZLD (Zero Liquid Discharge) technologies. These hybrid technologies provide zero discharge of liquid waste. The production string includes electro- and pressure driven processes, as well as vaporizers which allow obtaining the solids as the final residual product. For example, hardness salts initially contained in raw water, will be the final solid residues after the process of water preparing for a power plant. Waste dump is the one of possible ways of deliverance from these residues. But even in this case, the volume of discharges, compared with conventional methods resulting in liquid waste, is tens times reduced. Other fields of utilization are more interesting: as a filler of cement mortar used in construction, the use of salt or brine against icing of roads and others.

 

 

During the conference, two other "hot" topics which are important to sustainable development of society were also formulated:
1. Membrane reactors with enzymes: processing of solutions containing organic and inorganic substances, generation and separation of amino acids;
2. Gas separation using membranes.
During the conference, the European Coordinator G. Rios reviewed the course of project and discussed the "hot" topics , the Russian coordinator V.V. Nikonenko (Kuban State University, Krasnodar, Russia) described the actuality and perspectives of ZLD technologies, the market and expected impact of scientific and technical cooperation of MemBridge partners in and around this area (download the presentation). A.A. Tskhai (Membrane Technologies, Alma Ata, Kazakhstan) (download the presentation), V.I. Zabolotsky (Membrane Technology, Krasnodar, Russia), L. Novak (Mega, Czech Republic) discussed general principles and the case studies of ZLD technologies. M. Bleha (Institute of Macromolecular Chemistry AV CR, Prague, Czech Republic) gave information about the Czech membrane platform (download the presentation).