District to run water treatment research

Jenny Marder

The nation’s depleted drinking water supply has led researchers on a

quest to find new resources, and Newport-Mesa’s main water supplier,

the Orange County Water District, will serve as the test subject.

The district was selected by the National Science Foundation to

serve as the testing site for a nationwide research program aimed at

developing new water treatment technology. The water utility will use

a $99,000 grant, guaranteed by the foundation for the next five

years, to analyze equipment designed to purify water.

The team also includes researchers from Stanford University, the

University of Illinois and Clark Atlanta University.

The program’s goal is to increase and improve the world’s drinking

water supplies by focusing on technology that purifies compromised

water sources such as seawater and sewage water.

Central to the project is development of reverse osmosis

membranes, which are becoming common in the water purification

industry and edging out other kinds of water treatment technology,

said Don Phipps, director of research at the Orange County Water

District, the source of about 66% of Newport-Mesa’s water.

The reverse osmosis membrane is a device that separates water from

salt, bacteria and other constituents. Water molecules move easily

through the membrane, while salt and contaminants move more slowly

and are caught before passing through.

Reverse osmosis membranes take up less space, and therefore

require less real estate than other larger systems, because of their

mechanical and chemical simplicity.

“As time goes by and we continue into the 21st century, this

technology is going to become more widespread, and the use will

become more common at both the small scale and the industrial scale,”

Phipps said.

The membranes, are hardly perfect, though, Phipps said. They could

be cheaper, more energy efficient and less prone to problems.

Chemical and biological species, for example, are known to collect on

the surface of the membrane, making it difficult for water to pass

through.

“There’s a number of areas where we need to see new developments,”

Phipps said. “We’re working on a membrane that can produce a

better-quality product for less cost.”

The membrane samples will be created at Stanford and then sent to

Fountain Valley, where the research team will put the systems to

work, performing extensive experiments and testing to weed out what

doesn’t work.

Ron Wildermuth, the district’s communication director, said that

this is just one more step in the agency’s “tradition of innovation.”

“To be participating with this level of expertise demonstrates the

quality of people here at the Orange County Water District,”

Wildermuth said. “We’re talking the best in the country and maybe the

world.”

Shrinking water supplies are the project’s driving force. Many

water treatment experts such as Phipps believe there is a global

water crisis.

“It’s in our best interest not to waste that precious resource

that we have,” Phipps said. “Water is worth human lives. You can’t

exist without water.”

Phipps hopes that these new systems will play a part in bailing

out the dry nation.

“We need to be able to be much more efficient on how we deal with

our water, and what stands between us and that water supply is the

appropriate technology,” Phipps said.

* JENNY MARDER is a reporter with Times Community News. She can be

reached at (714) 965-7173 or by e-mail at jenny.marder@latimes.com.