Fresh water consumption in the scouring of raw wool at a Mill in South Africa has been dramatically reduced by a combination of two factors, namely the purification and recycling of some of the wash water for reuse during rinsing, and the recycle of water from the firm's biological degradation ponds for use in the earlier stages of wool washing and in neutralising. Purification is undertaken by means of formed-in-place hydrous zirconium (IV) oxide membranes which are deposited automatically on porous sintered stainless steel supports. While about the same total quantity of water is used to wash the wool as traditionally, fresh water consumption on selected washlines has been reduced by approximately half.

The results of sixteen months operation of an Ultrafiltration pilot-plant for the closed loop treatment and recycle of textile desizing effluent containing polyvinyl alcohol are described. The operation in the batch concentration and continuous modes are compared. Data on the effects of feed temperature, reject flowrate, size concentration and membrane cleaning on the permeate production rate are presented. The environmental impact and economics of a full-scale plant are discussed.

There are many possibilities for the direct carbon fuel cell approach including hydroxide and molten carbonate electrolytes, solid oxides capable of consuming dry carbon, and hybrids of solid oxide and molten carbonate technologies. The challenges in fabricating this type of fuel cell are many including how to transport the dry solids into the reactant chamber and how to transport the spent fuel (ash) out of the chamber for continuous operation[1]. We accomplish ash removal by utilizing a hydrodynamic approach, where inert gas or steam is injected into the anode chamber causing the carbon particles to circulate. This provides a means of moving the particles to a location where they can be separated or removed from the system. The graphic below illustrates how we segregate the spent fuel from the fresh fuel by creating multiple chambers. Each sequential chamber will have a reduced performance until the fuel is fully spent. At that point, the electrolyte/ash mixture can be removed from the cell area and cleaned for recycling or discarded.