Dow Water & Process Solutions, a business unit of The Dow Chemical Company has announced the opening of a commercial-scale manufacturing facility for the TEQUATIC™ PLUS fine particle filter in Menlo Park, CA, that is designed to meet growing demand for its line of F-50, F-75 and F-150 models.
The new Menlo Park facility is owned and operated by Clean Filtration Technologies (CFT), a wholly owned subsidiary of Dow.
According to Abhishek Shrivastava, manager of special projects, "The new facility reflects a five-fold increase in floor space, most of which is dedicated to manufacturing and research and development. It will also house a growing team of water filtration experts."
"We continue to operate at an accelerated pace as demonstrated by volume manufacturing and a reliable supply of product to customers across industries," said Shrivastava. "Importantly, the facility includes a state-of-the-art application development laboratory that will enable us to speed up R&D and product testing, to bring solutions to market faster than ever before."
The facility is designed around LEAN manufacturing principles, with strict quality control standards and best practices for safety leveraged from Dow. In addition, system and technical service field engineers are in place and focused on timely order response and on-site technical support.
The TEQUATIC PLUS filter is a breakthrough, patented technology that combines the power of continuously cleaning, cross-flow filtration with centrifugal separation and solids collection into one device. It is designed to handle a wide range of difficult-to-treat feedwaters having very high and highly variable total suspended solids (up to 10,000mg/l) much more cost-effectively and consistently than traditional technologies.
Cedella Beazley, CFT general manager, said, "Orders are already being filled in a variety of applications where the TEQUATIC PLUS filter is used as a primary filter; as a prefilter and pretreatment for applications such as reverse osmosis and ultrafiltration, or even as a post-filter in applications such as moving bed bioreactor (MBBR) systems."
"The MBBR application is the most recent application to benefit from the TEQUATIC PLUS filter, which is being integrated into systems for five hospitals in Iraq to help meet stringent requirements for treating wastewater prior to discharge into rivers," Beazley added. "The customer found the TEQUATIC PLUS filter to offer a variety of advantages over multi-media – including low maintenance, high uptime and the ability to simplify their system in ways that reduced their overall footprint."
According to John Patrin, CFT strategic marketing manager, "The TEQUATIC PLUS filter is also proving its value in other markets, such as oilfield water."
"In addition to low maintenance and high uptime, these customers are attracted to a high water recovery that is typically greater than 99%, low consumables and disposal costs, and low environmental impact," Patrin said. "The TEQUATIC PLUS filter is being used in applications with space and weight constraints, such as prefiltration for drinking water on oil platforms."