Technology

The Symbios Plasma Reactor features a continuous flow reactor (of significantly improved design) with patent-pending nanotechnology and advanced electrode improvements relative to the first-generation technology, previously proven by Symbios’ inventors to generate plasma and to treat organic pollutants and microorganisms effectively at 250 volts rather than the 20,000 to 30,000 volts required by other plasma technologies.

The high cost and ineffectiveness of current water treatment technologies present increasing technical and economic challenges to the food and beverage industry. Reverse osmosis (RO) technology was originally developed for desalination, but rapid developments have brought large price drops for RO systems over the past 15 years. Consequently, RO systems are now being considered as treatment systems for food and beverage plants, pharmaceutical plants, and boiler feed water for many industrial facilities because of their economic viability and ability to treat a wide range of contaminants. However, RO systems are plagued by high operations and maintenance costs due to persistent biofouling and clogging of their membranes.

The operation and maintenance of RO systems is not straightforward. The membranes in RO systems will easily foul (or plug) because of (1) biofilm growth; (2) aggregation of organic compounds; and (3) aggregation of inorganic particulates in the water. Biofilm growth and organic fouling are the most difficult problems to prevent in an RO system. If fouling problems are not continually monitored and attended to, the life of the RO system will be significantly shortened. Hence, an appropriate pre-treatment system should be installed ahead of the RO system. The complexity (and therefore the cost) of the pre-treatment system is dependent on the incoming water quality. Consequently, this pre-treatment can be as simple as a standard 5-μm filter, or as complex as a conventional flocculation/coagulation system or a microfiltration membrane system. In nearly all cases, chlorine is added to disinfect and control microbial growth in the system, but the water must then be de-chlorinated prior to reaching the RO membrane (normally with bisulfate or an activated carbon filter), thereby adding additional cost. Symbios’ Plasma Reactor provides a solution to these problems at minimal cost without the addition of hazardous disinfectants such as chlorine.

Symbios Plasma has developed a unique, cost-effective solution to the pre-treatment challenges encountered when using RO systems, and is set to take advantage of the $3.5 billion per year RO market that continues to grow at 10% per year. The Symbios Plasma Reactor will disinfect water and destroy most organic compounds present in the water. Conventional plasma treatment systems have been shown to be highly effective at destroying organic compounds and at killing microorganisms in water, but these treatment systems have required high voltages. Symbios Plasma’s patent-pending reactor will treat water in a continuous-flow environment by generating a plasma using low power, while retaining the high disinfectant and oxidizing capability of oxygen plasmas. Symbios Plasma’s current design is for a modular reactor capable of treating up to 15,000 gallons per day at low cost even for highly contaminated and variable input water, with ready scalability to significantly higher flow rates by adding modules in parallel to treat 100,000 gallons per day or more.

Thus, installing the Symbios Plasma Reactor immediately prior to the RO membrane unit will ensure that the water fed to the RO membranes is free of microorganisms, as well as having many nutrients and other organic compounds greatly reduced. This eliminates the cost and operating challenges of chlorination/dechlorination modules, reduces the amount of total organic carbon (TOC) reduction required for the RO system, and reduces the high maintenance costs associated with RO systems.

Food and beverage industry input water solutions

The Symbios Plasma reactor provides an RO pretreatment solution for the food and beverage industry with the following advantages:

Features and Benefits

• Compatible with existing RO systems
• Treatment of organics and pathogens at lower cost
• Eliminates clogging and biofouling of RO membranes
• Significant reduction in RO maintenance costs
• Lowest-cost plasma technology on the market
• Unaffected by changing influent water conditions
• Expected to treat even difficult-to-treat pesticides and pharmaceuticals
• Small reactor size and small foot print leading to low O&M costs
• Environmentally sustainable treatments
• Capable of co-treating variety of contaminants simultaneously
• Elimination of major pre-treatment and reducing the O&M costs
• No reject or brine waste stream

Industrial wastewater solutions

From nearly 90,000 industrial plants in the United States alone, trillions of gallons of wastewater are being discharged every day with only 10% of them being treated. This includes industries as diverse as the paper and pulp mill, food and beverage, textile, oil and gas, and manufacturing industries.

Symbios Plasma’s groundbreaking low-voltage plasma reactor can quickly and cost-effectively remove recalcitrant compounds, including everything from fuel additives to solvents to pesticides to even pharmaceutical microcontaminants. Our technology is modular, has a small footprint, low capital cost, low operating cost, and can treat even high-strength high-BOD water such as methanol- and formaldehyde-contaminated wastewater from pharmaceutical plants.

Features and Benefits

• Competitive O&M costs with UV and oxidation technologies
• Capable of handling high levels of organics and nutrients
• Oxidizes complex organics with a reduction in equipment and space
• Modular and scalable
• Continuous flow
• Cost-effective and compact system with small footprint
• Highly efficient under changing environmental
  and operational conditions
• No reject or brine waste stream