The ISD Solution
Extracting High Quality Freshwater
Desaln8 now offers new opportunities for extracting high quality freshwater supplies from poor quality brackish groundwater using In Situ Desalination (ISD) technology. This ISD technology combines water treatment (desalination) with hydrogeological knowledge and expertise to continuously and selectively extract in one simple operation high quality freshwater from otherwise poor quality groundwater.
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Unique Benefits
The unique system design allows processes of feed water supply, desalination treatment and concentrate return all to occur within a borehole - downhole - the system operating from a low-power submersible pump.
ISD uses aquifer properties and characteristics of the subsurface fluids to achieve treatment with minimal environmental impact. The system pumps brackish feed water into the borehole, treats this under in situ conditions and returns the concentrate to lower in the aquifer. Field trials and modeling of the hydraulics of ISD have shown that the system can be optimized to reduce or eliminate "dipole flow" of concentrate fluids back into the feed stream, utilizing natural aquifer stratification and the density contrast between natural groundwater and more saline concentrates.
ISD does not add any salt to the aquifer, and in most cases the beneficial use of the groundwater, even at a local level, is not compromised and there is minimal environmental impact. In addition, because ISD is a modular system with new ISD bores being added as demand rises, environmental impacts are minimized again by distributed return flows of concentrate. This system has advantages over centralized treatment plants which produce large volumes of concentrate which have significant costs for proper disposal to avoid environmental impacts.
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What is ISD?
The In Situ Desalination (ISD) technology provided by Desaln8, is a point-of-use, distributed system which is quite different from conventional potable supply systems. It is down-hole, uses brackish and saline groundwater feed, has a small footprint, low maintenance and low power requirements; it is modular and multi-function, and supplies potable water with considerable technical, environmental and cost advantages over other approaches.
Advantages Over Conventional Approaches
ISD provides relatively low cost groundwater-fed, distributed and localised water supply systems, involving a multiplicity of small units distributed at point-of-use as opposed to one single, large treatment plant supplying regional water supplies through reticulation.
This system offers considerable advantages over other, more conventional approaches. In terms of the Feedwater Extraction Costs, ISD not only saves pumping costs through down-hole technology but treatment under ambient groundwater conditions potentially reduces the need for pre-treatment and consequently reduces maintenance costs. ISD also removes the necessity of buffer tanks and additional pumping for water supply often associated with other conventional RO technologies.
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