Enhancements    

  • Center for Inland Desalination Systems

 
     500 W. University Ave  Kelly Hall, Room 208  El Paso, Texas 79968
 
Homecids@utep.edu
 
Phone Logo915-747-8953
 
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NETWORKS

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Mission and Goals

CIDS Mission is to mentor and empower students to develop elegant and sustainable water treatment solutions through research and global service learning projects.

Funders and Collaborators

The Center for Inland Desalination Systems (CIDS) builds on a strong foundation of related research already being done by faculty members in geological sciences, chemistry, and civil engineering at The University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP).

CIDS researchers are primarily focused on inland desalination issues such as researching and developing high recovery desalination processes and recovering useful products from desalination waste streams.

  • Desalination Technology Development
  • Maximizing Inland Desalination Efficiencies (minimizing waste & maximizing drinking water production)
  • Policy Analysis
  • Small Communities Assistance
  • Contaminant Fate & Transport
  • Contaminant Removal from water sources (well, surface, industrial, irrigation sources)
  • Water-Energy Nexus

KEYWORDS

  1. Desalination
  2. Electrodialysis
  3. High recovery desalination
  4. Membranes
  5. Nanofiltration
  6. Reverse Osmosis
  7. Salt Recovery
  8. Ultrafiltration
  9. Water Conservation
  10. Water Quality
  11. Water Regulations
  12. Water Treatment
  13. Zero Liquid Desalination

IN THE NEWS

  1. Researchers Improving Inland Desalination Process
  2. UTEP Places 2nd in International Desalination Competition
  3. UTEP Director Humbled by Honor from Texas Desalination Group
  4. Engineering Professor Recognized for Dedication to Water Industry

EXPERTISE

CIDS researchers are primarily focused on inland desalination issues such as researching and developing high recovery desalination processes and recovering useful products from desalination waste streams.
Energy-Water Nexus: Produced water treatment using conventional and novel processes, Treatment for extracted water applications to energy and carbon sequestration.
Policy and Small Communities Assistance: POU water treatment for improving sustainability and environmental justice in colonias of the Paso del Norte region, Practical alternatives to pilot plant studies for innovative water technologies, Desalination Concentrate Management policy Analysis for the Arid West.
Maximizing Inland Desalination Efficiencies (minimizing waste): Zero Discharge Desalination (ZDD), a form of zero liquid discharge, Recovery of sodium sulfate, sodium chloride and other useful salts or metals from brackish water, High-volume water recovery from silica-saturated RO concentrate.
Contaminant Removal & Resource Recovery: Desalination processes like RO tend to remove all contaminants from the water at about the same rate. However, often there is a need to remove special contaminants such as arsenic and ammonia without removing other less objectionable materials from the water. The CIDS group has expertise in the use of special adsorbents for the removal of low-level contaminants from water. CIDS also has expertise in the recovery of regenerant salts from ion-exchange resins used in the removal of contaminants from water.

CAPABILITIES

ELECTRODIALYSIS SYSTEMS
Electrodialysis (ED) is an electrically driven membrane process that can remove salt from dilute solutions and raise the concentration to levels no attainable by RO. CIDS has strong capabilities in ED technology unmatched by any other university in the USA. CIDS researchers work on the cutting edge of novel applications for ED. CIDS owns several laboratory (0.25-2 gallon per minute) and pilot sized (20-40 gallon per minute) ED systems, which are available for collaborative research or lease.

PRESSURE-DRIVEN MEMBRANE SYSTEMS (reverse osmosis and nanofiltration)
Reverse osmosis (RO) and nanofiltration (NF) utilize a membrane that is permeable to water but substantially impermeable to salt. Pressure applied to the salty water must overcome the natural osmotic forces that would transport water from the dilute to the concentrated salt solution. CIDS owns several pilot plants that allow demonstration of RO and NF at flow rates up to 40 gallons per minute.

LABORATORY TESTING & WATER QUALITY ANALYSIS

  • Engineering: CIDS has two laboratories (1600 square feet) used to research membrane-based and adsorption-based water treatment techniques and perform water quality analyses for research projects. One lab is used as a wet laboratory and currently includes two laboratory electrodialysis systems, and ultrafiltration system, and several salt recovery/contaminant removal systems. The other laboratory houses CIDS’ analytical equipment including: two ion chromatographs, an inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometer, a total organic carbon analyzer, a gas chromatograph, an ultraviolet-visible spectrophotometer, a crystallizer, and general analytical capabilities (pH, conductivity, TDS, TSS, colorimetric methods).
  • Burges Hall: CIDS has two laboratories (1400 square feet) used to research novel membrane-based treatment techniques such as membrane distillation, diffusion dialysis, and development of graphene-based membranes. A Beckman Coulter Multisizer™ 4 particle size analyzer allows CIDS researchers to quantitatively study suspended particles in water samples between 0.6-240 microns in size.

Please visit http://cids.utep.edu/ for additional information.

KEYWORDS

  1. Desalination
  2. Electrodialysis
  3. High recovery desalination
  4. Membranes
  5. Nanofiltration
  6. Reverse Osmosis
  7. Salt Recovery
  8. Ultrafiltration
  9. Water Conservation
  10. Water Quality
  11. Water Regulations
  12. Water Treatment
  13. Zero Liquid Desalination

IN THE NEWS

  1. Researchers Improving Inland Desalination Process
  2. UTEP Places 2nd in International Desalination Competition
  3. UTEP Director Humbled by Honor from Texas Desalination Group
  4. Engineering Professor Recognized for Dedication to Water Industry

MEMBERS

No members to display.

KEYWORDS

  1. Desalination
  2. Electrodialysis
  3. High recovery desalination
  4. Membranes
  5. Nanofiltration
  6. Reverse Osmosis
  7. Salt Recovery
  8. Ultrafiltration
  9. Water Conservation
  10. Water Quality
  11. Water Regulations
  12. Water Treatment
  13. Zero Liquid Desalination

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