At the opening session of the 2016 AWWA/AMTA Membrane Technology Conference (MTC) in San Antonio, TX, I announced on-stage that MTC is my all-time favorite conference. I had been invited to address the conference as a recipient of the NWRI-AMTA Fellowship for Membrane Technology. What I said, I wasn’t exaggerating. MTC is an amazing conference to bring together key players in the membrane industry. Together, we are tackling many of the difficult problems in water treatment and projects presented at this conference are incredibly impressive and exciting.
Part of the innovation is occurring at the applications level. As new water quality challenges arise, engineers are coming up with new ways to apply existing membrane technology. Part of the innovation is occurring at the start up level. Burgeoning companies are inventing new ways to configure and commercialize membrane products. And part of the innovation is occurring at the academic level. Researchers are using information from the fields of materials science and chemistry to design and develop novel membrane systems and materials. MTC provides a place for all these components to come together and truly synchronize efforts.
I presented on my research in a talk titled “Membrane Filtration of Colloidal Activated Carbon: Considerations for Optimization of Head Loss Reduction and Small Molecule Adsorption.” I discussed the difficulties with applying superfine activated carbon particles and options for minimizing membrane fouling. My colleague, Peng Xie, presented his talk “Comparison of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and Experimental Data for Fouling Mitigation With Sinusoidal Reverse Osmosis Spacer.” His research explores improvements to membrane flux especially for high fouling waters such as those in water reuse scenarios.
The membranes industry has a strong presence of young professionals. I volunteered to help with a joint Young Professional networking event with representatives from AWWA, AMTA, and IDA. Perhaps unsurprisingly, many of the young professionals in the membranes industry carry higher education degrees. We played a round of water themed trivia and thoroughly had a good time. The people that I met are probably people I will be crossing paths with over and over again as we pursue our individual careers. All in all, MTC is an extremely worthwhile experience, both to learn about recent projects and new developments, as well as to make new friends and meet up with old ones!
