At the 2017 Global Water Summit in Madrid, Turkey’s Hyrec took home Technology Idol’s Distinction Award for its Hyrec Brine Concentrator, osmotically-assisted reverse osmosis (OARO) technology. Last week, WDR checked in with Basel Abu Sharkh, the company’s CEO and Tech Idol presenter. “We’ve made a lot of progress in commercializing our OARO technology since then. In addition to our near commercial size seawater concentration system, which has been in operation for six months, we are working with some sodium sulfate and lithium chloride streams, and concentrating textile and high-salinity chemical industry waste streams containing sodium chloride salt concentrations of more than seven percent,” said Dr. Abu Sharkh. Hyrec’s patented Brine Concentrator is a variation of the RO process in which a dilute saline solution is introduced on the membrane’s product side to reduce the osmotic pressure differential, and lower the required feed pressure. Brine is cascaded through multiple stages, concentrating the solution to near saturation levels, while producing a low-TDS product water stream.
“Our multistage OARO system is successfully concentrating 220 m3/d [58,125 GPD] of reject from a SWRO system operating in the Aegean Sea. It produces 20 m3 /d [5,284 GDP] of brine with a 250,000 ppm TDS while recovering about 200 m3 /d [52,840 GPD] of low-TDS permeate. Our system has been in operation for more than six months, and its energy consumption is approximately 5.8 kWh/m3 [22.95 kWh/kgal],” said Abu Sharkh. The company currently has operations in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, and is planning to relocate its headquarters to Boston in January 2019.
Originally published for the Vol.54, Number 43 of “Water Desalination Report”
