Rosedale Products' Versatile Basket Filters ... - Filtration News

and Game laboratory in Santa Cruz,California, and then scaled up to a 450-gallon system at the Southeast WastewaterTreatment facility in SanFrancisco. Potential commercial applicationsare now being explored withvarious companies.“We’ve addressed some of the moredaunting technological problems forimplementing OMEGA,” said projectscientist Jonathan Trent. “Now thehope is that other organizations and industrieswill realize the potential of theOMEGA technology for wastewatertreatment and ultimately to producesustainable biofuels,” he said.CHALLENGESThere are three primary challengesto cost-effective algae production, accordingto technology developer OriginOil,based in Los Angeles:• Algae grow suspended in large volumesof water and using conventionalThe benefits of the Single Step Extraction algae dewatering process.methods, a mature culture must beconcentrated before oil can be extractedfrom each cell. This de-wateringstage is energy-intensive, and typicallyrequires chemical additives and expensivecapital equipment.• Algae are protected by a tough cellwall, which has to be cracked – an energy-intensiveprocess – to extract theoil. The challenge is to maximize oilyield by ‘cracking’ as many of the algaecells as possible with the smallestamount of energy.• The production is energy-intensive.In order to achieve economic viability,it is critical that energy is