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Ed Yeates ReportingA Utah company has developed a revolutionary new treatment system that cleans up contaminated water or any other fluid in just a matter of minutes.
On the shores of a filthy, dirty drainage canal west of Salt Lake a Utah company called EcoNova today demonstrated its new wastewater technology. For this first-ever public demo, the company rolled out a small portable unit that cleans at the rate of five gallons per minute. Dirty water from the canal goes in one end, clean comes out on the other. And it’s clean enough to drink.
Mark Kendell, CEO, EcoNova: "We actually designed this one for the us navy to be on a trailer, so they could use it to go from pier to pier to clean the bilge out of ships."
The company separates that bilge into oil and water, both reusable. Even solids are taken out ready to be resold or placed back into the environment, meeting or exceeding EPA standards. While today’s demonstration showed only five gallons per minute, larger units will handle 100 to 300 gallons per minute.
Kevin Collier, Inventor & Developer, EcoNova: "We feel like this is the first electromechanical water treatment facility that has been developed."
That means instead of large cleanup lagoons, filtration tanks and chemicals the technology uses centrifugal force and electrolysis to spin, clean and separate out contaminates, bacteria and heavy metals. Even if the water contains 100 percent oil, the units will clean and separate both the water and oil.
EcoNova has been dealing mainly with big companies that worry not just about dirty canal water, but huge amounts of industrial waste. But with droughts and dwindling water resources here and elsewhere, it's now looking at other applications.
Kevin Collier, Inventor & Developer, EcoNova: "Take existing, contaminated sites -- start cleaning those. But take other sites that are using water and start to recycle that water and reuse that water."
The company claims the units have the potential to clean even dangerous PCB contaminates from water.
