The present liquid purification method, carried out with the aid of a liquid purification system, includes a three-stage liquid filtration cycle, during which all of the drain liquid can be continuously fed back into the purification system until the liquid filtration cycle is complete. During this continuous recycling, a high liquid flow rate is maintained, and the feed rate of the liquid can be controlled during the continuous mixing of initial liquid and drain liquid. The common aim of this subject matter and the technical result achieved in the use of same is the development of a novel energy-efficient method and system for purifying liquids which makes it possible to improve the energy-efficiency of liquid purification while simultaneously increasing the degree of purification and the extent to which the initial liquid is used.

An object of the present invention is to provide a water treatment system in which explosions can be prevented even when filtering water to be treated that is able to generate flammable gas. A water treatment system according to an embodiment of the present invention includes a water-to-be-treated tank which stores water to be treated, a crossflow-type filtration membrane module which filters the water to be treated, a supply passage through which the water to be treated is supplied to the filtration membrane module from the water-to-be-treated tank by using a supply pump, and a recirculation passage through which the water to be treated is recirculated from the filtration membrane module to the water-to-be-treated tank. The supply passage is provided with an aspirator which mixes a gas with the supplied water to be treated, the gas being recirculated through the recirculation passage to the water-to-be-treated tank together with the water to be treated. The water-to-be-treated tank has an upper space provided above the liquid surface of the stored water to be treated, the upper space being hermetically filled with an inert gas. The water-to-be-treated tank is further provided with a gas transport passage through which the inert gas is supplied from the upper space to the aspirator.

A water purification system utilizes an ionomer membrane and mild vacuum to draw water from source water through the membrane. A water source may be salt water or a contaminated water source. The water drawn through the membrane passes across the condenser chamber to a condenser surface where it is condensed into purified water. The condenser surface may be metal or any other suitable surface and may be flat or pleated. In addition, the condenser surface may be maintained at a lower temperature than the water on the water source side of the membrane. The ionomer membrane may be configured in a cartridge, a pleated or flat plate configuration. A latent heat loop may be configured to carry the latent heat of vaporization from the condenser back to the water source side of the ionomer membrane. The source water may be heated by a solar water heater.

A cycling ultra-thin channel filtration (cUTF) method, system and module are disclosed for concentration and purification of biomolecules. In one embodiment, a cUTF system includes a cUTF module and a cycle controller to load a feed aliquot of a feed stream into the cUTF module inducing permeation of the feed stream to build a boundary layer by pressurizing the feed stream, to stop permeation and to recover a retentate aliquot in a repeating cycle.

Many hand-held diagnostics are limited in their functionality due to the challenging physics associated with small dimensional systems. An example of this is capillary forces in hydrophilic systems, such as the tight retention of liquid passing through a small pore filtration membrane, or capillary force driven microfluidics where, to keep liquid flowing the dimensions of the system become so small that the flow rates are too low to be useful, or the manufacturing of such devices becomes uneconomical. This disclosure details methods to reset the capillary force condition to avoid the requirement of transient pressure spikes associated with the breakthrough pressure of small pore membranes, and avoid the necessity of extremely small microfluidic channels, which can be useful in applications such as filtration of whole blood to plasma using only suction pressure or passive capillary pressure.

A water storage tank built for a reverse osmosis water purifying system deploys multi water flow passages of purified water and drainage water, allocated a soft bladder unit receiving purified water encompassed by the waste water in the tank. When the water tank unit is fully filled with water, the water pressure activates the auto-shut-off valve or solenoid valve to stop operation of the reverse osmosis water purifying system. When the dispensing faucet is turned on, the drainage water swells to squeeze the soft bladder unit to deliver the purified water out from the soft bladder unit to the dispensing faucet, and the drainage water flushes the reverse osmosis membrane as well. The technique enables the tank to take the least water pressure resistance to hold water and drain water which results in energy saving and water saving.

A method of separating heavy water from normal through application of acoustic pressure shock waves to a fluid including heavy water and normal water and recovering separated normal water.

An electrodialysis process and apparatus is presented for improving the current efficiency of salty water desalination. The process includes reducing the osmotic and the electro-osmotic flow of water from diluate compartments to concentrate compartments, and between electrode compartments and adjacent compartments, by confinement and hydraulic isolation of their contents in constant volume compartments, so that the tendency of waters entering from diluate compartments to concentrate compartments leads to pressure buildup in the concentrate compartments, reducing the transfer of product desalinated water to the concentrate waste.

A method of desalinating water through application of acoustic pressure shock waves to a slush to separate ice crystals from brine and recovering desalinated water from the separated ice crystals.

Acoustic pressure shock waves are applied to a membrane in a fluid to prevent attachment of or dislodge biological or solid matter for membrane cleaning or desalination with a membrane.