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The technology has been implemented on projects all over North America, and is
beginning to expand to other continents as well. Inset: In just a year and a half, the
team reworked the system entirely—from vertical to horizontal layouts—and rethought
the membrane setup from an operator’s perspective.
but as soon as we got into it, it wasn’t that difficult,” he
says. Initially, Swirltex worked on smaller package plants
handling just 25 to 50 cubic metres per day. But their
first pilot project scaled up dramatically to 3,000 cubic
metres—a jump that exposed the limitations of standard
tubular membranes. The team had to rethink their configuration to manage the volume and energy demands.
“It forced our hands to make changes fast and move the
product forward,” Christou adds. Now, most of their
projects handle over 1,000 cubic metres per day, which is
an uncommon scale for membrane systems.
The technology is currently deployed in a variety of
wastewater systems. One of the more challenging areas
is mining. Mining wastewater has fine colloidals, such as
clay and other debris, that end up building up like solids
later on. “The best way to explain it is if you’ve ever driven your car down a dirt road, you know that the dirt and
dust will build up on the back of your vehicle. The same
thing happens with membranes,” explains Christou. “All
membranes cake.” With the BEMF, the membrane acts
like a different product where they have the capabilities
of doing things that they
weren’t able to do before.
“Where mining would usually
“Treatingwastewatercanoftenfeellikeanoverwhelming,highbe really difficult for other
membrane systems or normal
maintenancetask,butsimplifyingboththetreatmentprocess
tubulars, we have no issues
andday-to-dayoperationsmakesasigni昀椀cantdi昀昀erence.”
with.”
Treating wastewater can
often feel like an overwhelming, high-maintenance task, but simplifying both the
were kind of forced to reconfigure our systems to larger
treatment process and day-to-day operations makes a
flows. Everything we used for tubular membranes was
significant difference. According to Christou, reducing
right out the window.” In just a year and a half, the team
that complexity not only eases the operational burden
reworked the system entirely—from vertical to horizonbut also opens up possibilities for using membrane
tal layouts—and rethought the membrane setup from an
technology in areas where it wasn’t previously considered
operator’s perspective. “That was actually fun,” he says.
viable. Still, he noted the technology isn’t a one-size-fits“All the things you knew were going to fix it, you got to
all solution. Ensuring that companies and engineering
put them in.” The result was a membrane system that
firms understand where it works best—and where it
didn’t just function at scale, but was also easier to operate
doesn’t—is key to applying it effectively.
and maintain than traditional options. “That was a good
Typically, when working on a pilot, there is not the
feeling—having everything work well from theoretical
opportunity to play around with the wastewater to see
bench testing to larger systems. That was where I was
what works and what doesn’t. For Swirltex, one of the
like, finally, something’s going my way.”
biggest changing points in the company was offering cliAlthough Christou came into the space with little
ent sampling for free. “Clients would send in wastewater
background in produced water and midstream operations,
samples and we would get a chance to test them chemihe adapted quickly. “There was a learning curve for me,
The concept took shape in 2016, when Swirltex
founder and president Peter Christou was working
as a consultant, focusing on ceramic membranes and
oil-water separation. “It was a bit of a soul sucking process
because it never really worked the way it was supposed
to; you could never get a full recovery,” says Christou. “I
thought—what happens if you spin the liquid? Would the
oil get sucked into the centre?” Noticing a huge difference
right away, Christou realized something could come from
this. He filed a patent and then took on a first project in
Antarctica for Concordia Research Station.
Turning the concept into a working commercial system came with its share of challenges. “There was a bit of
naivety on my part; when there’s a good idea and something makes sense, you have to commercialize it,” says
Christou. But moving from bench testing to real-world
systems meant confronting issues of cost, energy, and
competing against entrenched technologies.
Early tubular membrane configurations, he explains,
hadn’t evolved much since the 1970s and simply weren’t
designed for the scale Swirltex was aiming for. “We
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