Source: Purifics Water
LONG BEACH & LONDON, MAY 22, 2018 -- Purifics Water, Inc. of London, Ontario (CAN) has been awarded a $4.41 million contract by the City of Long Beach, CA for the purchase of stormwater purification equipment. The treatment equipment to be provided by Purifics consists of its patented ceramic ultra-filtration system CUF® and photocatalytic oxidation process known as Photo-Cat®.
The City Council unanimously approved the contract award on a sole source basis in its meeting on April 3. In a City Council resolution, the City justified the sole source procurement by stating the following: "Purifics Water, Inc. controls over 30 patents worldwide with a proprietary system that meets all the requirements for the Project and has no known equal, and, as a result, no useful purpose would be served by advertising for bids and to do so would constitute an idle and useless act and an unnecessary expenditure of public funds."
The Purifics water treatment technologies will be used to treat stormwater and purify it for recycling and reuse. The stormwater reuse project is part of a much larger venture by the City called the Municipal Urban Stormwater Treatment Project (MUST). The recycled water resulting from treatment using the Purifics technologies will irrigate City parks and sustain a wetlands habitat that has been proposed as part of the LB-MUST Project.
The stormwater recycling component of the LB-MUST Project is projected to cost $30 million and will consist of a stormwater treatment facility whose objective is to improve Long Beach's water quality and create a wetlands area which will benefit aquatic life and recreational beach activity. Through the capture and treatment of the stormwater, the Project will reduce pollutants into the Los Angeles River and City beaches.
Tony Powell, the Purifics Project Manager and CTO of the firm, said that "Purifics is pleased and honored to have its technologies selected by Long Beach and Stantec." A Stantec spokesperson noted that "Stantec is looking forward to collaborating with Purifics on this exciting project."
Powell believes this is one of the first large stormwater reuse projects in California and, given California's need for additional water resources, other similar projects will likely follow.
The primary source of pollutants to be purified is urban runoff. The proposed Purifics treatment system purifies water with a combination of its patented and innovative technologies – CUF® and Photo-Cat® – which will remove virtually all the pollutants in the waste stream. CUF® removes oil and grease, turbidity, and various heavy metals. The ceramic membranes are made of silicon carbide and have a lifespan of 25 years. The Photo-Cat® process is a chemical free advanced oxidation process (AOP) that destroys both organic chemical contaminants and pathogens.
Purifics offers complete water purification solutions using ceramic membrane technology. Its three disruptive technologies filter, destroy and recover contaminants from water with zero liquid discharge (ZLD) through solids recovery. With consistent annual investments in R&D, Purifics has been successful in developing 5th generation ceramic membranes and the CUF® (Ceramic Ultra-Filtration) process, which represents a quantum leap forward in membrane filtration, yielding benefits other membrane processes cannot match in terms of comparative performance.
