Silicon Carbide (SiC) Membrane Solutions

SiC Membranes Bring Water Back to Life

Water is the most resilient substance on Earth, but we are pushing it to its limits. Pollutants are worsening. Regulations are tightening. Water supplies are dwindling.

All the water we have is all the water we will have.

It’s our responsibility to solve complex water problems with innovative recovery and reuse approaches—to find a solution as resilient as water itself.

That’s SiC Ultrafiltration.

Ovivo has combined silicon carbide (SiC) membrane technology with our system integration and process expertise to produce a powerful treatment system with a vast range of capabilities.

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A BREAKTHROUGH IN ULTRAFILTRATION TECHNOLOGY

THE PROBLEM

Ultrafiltration plays a key role in our water future.

No other technology provides the same level of treatment in a single step. But while membranes produce the highest water quality, conventional polymeric membranes fail when stressed, don’t adapt to changing environments, and can be a pain to operate.

THE OVIVO SOLUTION

SiC Ultrafiltration membrane technology efficiently and effectively removes solids, toxic pollutants, and pathogens to produce safe, clean, and sustainable water sources in both municipal and industrial sectors.

This technology is one of the few membrane materials that is naturally and permanently hydrophilic. Organic foulants, including oil, are repelled by the membrane, while water is absorbed. SiC is also chemically inert and extremely hard. Most anything can be used to clean it.

SiC can help your water and wastewater treatment plant recover from extreme weather events without failure, damage, or disruption.

SiC Ultrafiltration is a resilient and revolutionary technology, able to seamlessly adapt to today’s complex and constantly changing water treatment challenges.

TREATING, RECOVERING, AND REUSING WATER HAS NEVER BEEN MORE CRITICAL

HOW IT WORKS

Silicon carbide (SiC) plates are fired at over 3,600^oF (2,000^oC) to permanently bond the grains to one another, forming a very porous, hard, and monolithic structure.

SiC plates are then assembled into modules, which are placed on top of one another to form stacks.

SiC stacks are then submerged within a basin where a slight vacuum is applied to the membrane to pull water through the 0.1 micron membrane pores.

Solids, pathogens, and other contaminants are blocked by membrane pores and retained on the surface. Periodically, water is reversed through the membranes to dislodge and remove solids that have accumulated on the surface. In some applications, air bubbles up between plates to provide a scouring action, which further keeps the membrane clean.

APPLICATIONS

SiC Ultrafiltration has a vast range of applications with a wide operating window to solve new and existing water treatment challenges.

SiC Ultrafiltration Drinking Water Membrane Treatment

The SiC Ultrafiltration system is used for conventional plant upgrades, hollow fiber replacements, and greenfield installations. It provides advanced treatment to remove harmful contaminants such as toxic pollutants and pathogens. SiC Ultrafiltration ensures that your water is safe to drink—that your community’s health is never compromised.

SiC Ultrafiltration Advanced Wastewater Treatment

Conventional wastewater treatment plants can be easily upgraded to advanced water treatment facilities by simply implementing SiC Ultrafiltration after the secondary clarifiers. The extremely high-quality effluent produced by SiC Ultrafiltration makes reuse and discharge safer and more reliable, creating clean water for everyone. SiC Ultrafiltration provides the robustness needed to protect public health for direct potable reuse (DPR) or indirect potable reuse (IPR) and the high level of reliability needed to meet the needs for cooling at datacenters. SiC Ultrafiltration can also be used to meet the most stringent discharge limits including ultra-low total phosphorous and heavy metals. Like MBR, tertiary membrane treatment offers membrane-quality effluent but with lifecycle costs of 30% to 50% of those of MBR technology.

SiC Ultrafiltration Stormflow Treatment

Wet weather events present significant challenges for utilities as it is very difficult to treat a high volume of highly variable wastewater quickly and effectively. SiC Ultrafiltration ensures that the calm before the storm remains throughout the entire storm duration and the immediate aftermath. This resilient and adaptable solution instantly treats variable storm flows and loads including the first flushes. The SiC Ultrafiltration is resistant to high solids and fats, oils, and grease (FOG) often seen in stormflows. It provides high-rate treatment (HRT) and effectively removes solids, pathogens, and other toxic pollutants, creating a safe and clean effluent that does not require any additional disinfection—making it safe to swim in our waterways after a storm.

SiC Ultrafiltration Membrane Bioreactor (MBR)

SiC Ultrafiltration overcomes many of the many operational challenges associated with MBR systems. Whether you need a clean-in-place (CIP) system or dewatered sludge removal, the ease of cleaning makes SiC Ultrafiltration a much more resilient and reliable membrane selection for MBR plants.