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| THE PROCESS
The
"Passarel" process has had a considerable amount of due diligence performed by
both the Department of Commerce and the Department of Energy, as well as United States and
Korean companies. Both have verified its commercial viability. WDI's capability to produce
fresh water at lower cost is derived from its patented system, the Accelerated
Distillation - Advance Vapor Compression System (AD-AVCS), that provides efficiencies
currently unobtainable with technologies used today for desalinating sea water. Of
particular interest, this process is based upon earlier processes, which have been used
for many years with great success. The process combines accelerated distillation with
highly efficient vapor compression. Specifically, the "Passarel" process
combines these two processes with "state of the art" components and
technologies, which enhance both efficiency and economy. This is the real benefit of the
"Passarel" process. The cost per acre-foot is estimated below $800/acre foot as
compared with competitive units as high as $2,600/acre foot.
The distillation process has been used to separate liquid mixtures into components
useful to mankind for centuries. Distilleries for manufacturing alcoholic beverages are
probably the most familiar application of distillation. As time progressed, profit and
technology inspired improvements to the distillation process to what we see today in
modern water purification plants. Hence, distilled water is the purist form of potable
water.
The first vapor compression evaporators, using mechanical compressors, were built in
Europe about? 100+ years ago. Since then, thousands of mechanical vapor compression
evaporators have been used for desalting sea and brackish water. Others have been used in
chemical processing industries to concentrate solutions ranging from inorganic chemicals
to temperature sensitive food products. The primary advantage of this mechanical vapor
compression over conventional vapor compression, (single or multi-effect arrangements), is
that a far lower energy consumption is realized due to the efficiency in recycling of the
thermal energy and accelerating the cycling time. The price of oil and other energy
sources provides additional incentives to utilize vapor compression evaporation as a means
of reducing energy, operations and maintenance costs. |
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