(175a) A Survey of Separation Technologies for Drinking Water Treatment in Developing Country Settings, with a Focus On Membrane Systems

A wide array of separation technologies are in use to treat drinking water in less-industrialized economies. These technologies are deployed in centralized, semi-centralized, and household applications. This presentation will provide an overview of those applications as well as a more detailed discussion of membrane-based systems.

Membrane technologies have come into increasingly widespread use in water and wastewater treatment in industrialized countries. The conventional wisdom is that they represent high-end state-of-the-art methods whose costs remain prohibitively high for application in developing country markets.

We have spent nearly two years researching the mature drinking water refill industry in Southeast Asia and the emerging industries in South Asia and East Africa. We have met with entrepreneurs operating existing water treatment and refill businesses, government regulators, local financial institutions, and water treatment equipment suppliers to understand the current state of the sector and evaluate its future prospects. We have also been working with local entrepreneurs to develop new water treatment and vending enterprises.

Membrane systems are already in widespread use in the Asian water refill sector, primarily in the form of reverse osmosis incorporated into multibarrier designs employing pretreatment (in addition to a separate optional disinfection stage). We estimate that at least 5,000 Filipino water refill businesses employ RO as a core element of their treatment process, where supply chains for membranes and other system components are well-developed. Other membrane designs have recently begun to be deployed as standalone systems, most notably hollow-fiber ultrafiltration.

The convergence of increasing affordability of membrane-based treatment systems with increasing capacity to purchase, operate, and maintain these systems suggests that the less industrialized economies will represent a massive emerging market for membrane technologies in drinking water treatment in the future.