Water Planet said its IntelliFlux artificial intelligence (AI) based software is being utilized in a project in Wasco, California to assess the performance and economics of treating produced water for agricultural reuse.
The project, which is being carried out with Sweetwater Tech Resources, uses Water Planet’s IMS-5000 Integrated Produced Water Treatment Solution powered by IntelliFlux.
As part of the project, Water Planet is also running a standard reverse osmosis unit to desalt the brackish water that is left following the treatment by the ceramic ultrafiltration membranes.
Preliminary results are anticipated to be available next month, and will be submitted to regulators.
IntelliFlux is a fully automated and self-adaptive filtration process control software developed to increase the performance of filtration systems in some highly challenging applications.
It learns how the filter responds to the influent water quality to identify custom-optimized flux maintenance actions.
With usage over time, the software can adjust automatically and fully adjust flux maintenance protocols in real time.
Water Planet said that IntelliFlux can be used to control membrane filtration (MF), Ultrafiltration (UF), Nanofiltration (NF) and Reverse Osmosis (RO) membranes and any other filtration media where periodical backwashing, cleaning or renegeneration are required.
It works in membrane systems designed to meet a range of applications such as oil and gas produced water treatment, chemical, pharmaceutical, biotech, food and beverage waste treatment, refining, power and other industrial water treatment industries.
Water Planet CEO Eric Hoek said: "We are currently running a series of demonstrations using a range of waters provided by a consortium of California oil producers to evaluate treating produced water for potential use in agricultural irrigation.
"Our goals are to assess the water quality that can be achieved and the cost of doing so."