Overview
Experience overseas, especially in the USA, informs us that PRW, can be successfully implemented for industry and to augment potable water supply at significant scale. However, because advanced water treatment for the likes of potable substitution and PRW remains novel in Australia, it is essential that the community, regulators and elected officials have the opportunity to see with their own eyes how purified water is generated and how quality is assured. As such, a pilot plant can be utilised at an early stage in project development to help gain stakeholder acceptance.
For planning and business case preparation, utilities and designers need access to early-phase process amenability data, without being locked into any one vendor, so that process flowsheet options for a particular water source can be short-listed for full-scale facility cost estimation. Due to the ‘novelty’ of potable substitution (satisfying potable quality requirement) and PRW for Australia, regulators require confidence that a particular process train can reasonably be carried forward prior to incurring the large expense of detailed design and/or a demonstration-scale facility.
Instrumentation, including novel surrogate monitoring approaches, need to be assessed to determine whether they can provide relevant outputs for critical control point monitoring and real-time LRV verification.
For inland regions in particular:
- the option of carbon-based advanced treatment needs to be able to be assessed in parallel with RO to determine whether RO brines can be avoided or at least minimised, and
- bulk samples of pre-concentrated saline waste need to be able to be generated to assess options for downstream brine and salt management.
No such facility exists in Australia.
The anticipated raw water feed capacity of the pilot plant is anticipated to be in the range of 20-50 L/minute, and the actual design will depend upon marrying capacities of selected process components. A stepped-down capacity may also be employed as the water progresses through the treatment train to minimise ultimate facility footprint and costs without reducing functionality for evaluating process performance.
WaterRA contact: Marty Hancock
Budget estimate: $150,000
Seeking Industry contributions of $20,000 to $50,000 from at least 4 utility partners.
Closing date: 1 June 2026