In the area of waste water treatment,membrane technology is frequently used to remove unwanted chemical contaminants from water. Membranes have very good separation characteristics and flux with improved life time and chemical stability over current products.
Though membrane technology is highly effective, it can be expensive, and is limited by the rate of flow allowed through the membrane.
The Ben Gurion University in Isreael is currently offering a new membrane technology through its transfer office.
According to the offer, the proposed technology “solves the problem of achieving the currently unmet combination of membrane stability (robustness) with good separation and product flow (flux) needed to improve cost effectiveness by loweringenergy consumption, operational costs and capital investment”
Depending on the degree of improvement, this could be a solution worth investigating in the context of water treatment, and RAS.
Lt. Col. Matt Schofield, an environmental scientist at the U.S. Army Center for Environmental Health Research in Fort Detrick, Md., says, “Everybody drinks water, and the question of whether or not there’s a contaminant or a toxic substance in the water is very real.”
According to U.S. Army Center for Environmental Health Research biologist Tom Shedd, when there are changes in water quality, there are changes in fish behavior
Now to help make sure your water is safe, environmental scientists are using something that lives in the water to monitor it closely — fish! In a new early warning system called IAC 1090 or the “intelligent Aquatic BioMonitoring System,” bluegills are signal of toxins in our water.
Eight fish sit in chambers submersed in water from a nearby water supply. If pollutants are present, the fish will change their breathing patterns. Electrodes in each chamber monitor any changes. If six fish are stressed, an alarm goes off.
Shedd says at that moment they don’t necessarily know what is the contaminant or the stressor to the fishes, but you know that it’s there. The fish have reacted to two farming spills. Officials were able to prevent any toxins from getting into drinking water.
“The fish system is a common sense, logical way to monitor for water quality,” Shedd says.
BACKGROUND: Bluegill fish are keeping vigil over the Washington region’s water supplies, and might be able to save millions of lives in the event of a terrorist attack. They are a key component of a new early-warning water-monitoring device that electronically analyzes the behavior of eight captive bluegills to detect the presence of chemical toxins or other contaminants. The system, called IAC 1090 Intelligent Aquatic Biomonitoring System, is also being used in New York City and San Francisco.
HOW IT WORKS: The biomonitoring system resembles a luggage trunk outfitted with cables and tubes, and hooked up to a monitor. Eight juvenile bluegills swim in a row of solitary compartments, submerged in piped-in water and separated from the others by a pane of frosted glass. Electrodes attached to each compartment convey data about the fish’s movements and breathing patterns to a computer. When the fish use muscles to breathe, the action sends a low-level electrical pulse through the water that can be detected by the electrodes.
Fish cough by flexing their gills to get rid of unwanted particles, like grains of sand, from their breathing passages. If the fish shows signs of distress in response to something in the water by coughing or increased activity, the system automatically trips an alarm, takes samples, and summons authorities by email and pager so that they can investigate whether there is a threat to humans. The cost of the system is between $45,000 and $110,000.
ABOUT BLUEGILLS: The bluegill is a freshwater fish native to much of North America, from Quebec to northern Mexico, and is the state fish of Illinois. Its name comes from the bright blue-colored edging along its gills. Bluegills are popular game fish, chiefly caught at dawn and dusk. They subsist on small invertebrates and very small fish. The bluegill is able to elude predators by hiding in submerged tree stumps and to survive for weeks without food. Bluegills are also extremely sensitive to minute changes in the source water quality, and they are also quite sedentary, making them ideal candidates for the IAC 1090 system.
More information can be got from http://www.sciencedaily.com/videos/2007/0303-small_fish_detect_big_problems.htm
Water recirculation and filtration systems have practical applications in commercial aquaculture hatcheries, holding tanks and aquaria systems.
The main objective of water recirculation is said to be minimization of the need for water replacement, maintaining of water quality conditions and ensure constant water supply in aquaculture projects.
The designs available of water recirculation work effectively when the following are accomplished: aeration, removal of particulate matter, biological filtration to remove waste ammonia and nitrite and buffering of PH.
Explore more from the article: http://www.nzaquaculture.co.nz/AQUACULTURE%2012.pdf
Inventors Lin Nan-Ho, Chen Shimne have invented a new indoor aquaculture system that is capable of automatically monitoring water quality, automatically replenishing breeding water and automatically dispensing feeds.
The system has an indoor breeding pond for breeding aquatic or marine products in a staged-breeding approach to increase breeding density and reduce required space.
Breeding water is processed in advance by a re-circulating water treatment system and water quality is constantly monitored by a water quality monitor and control system to maintain the breeding water at the optimum condition.
A movable feed dispensing control system is located above the breeding pond for dispensing feeds evenly thereby to increase breeding survival rate, improve breeding yield and better control breeding product quality.
The primary objectives of this patented invention are to overcome the harmful effect resulting from external environments, to improve breeding survival rate, to provide a high density aquaculture system to increase breeding yield.
The invention also provides an automatic aquaculture system to facilitate control of breeding water quality and dispensing of feeds in a constant time and quantity manner.
The details of this patented invention can be accessed at
http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/6499431/fulltext.html
