the hangzhou water treatment technology development center’s 1,000-ton energy “recoverer” won the second science and technology progress award in zhejiang province and the first science and technology progress award in hangzhou city.
the center has taken the lead in studies on the efficient energy recovery unit since 2000 to upgrade china’s competitiveness in the seawater desalination industry and lower desalination engineering equipment investment and energy consumption.
the study first proposed the cartridge valve-controlled energy recovery unit, which used plug-in structure and multiple pressure exchange pipes coupling technology. the unit used high-pressure concentrated seawater to push pistons to increase fed seawater pressure, realizing effective recovery and utilization of residual pressure from desalination.
at the same time, the center independently developed the hydraulic pressure one-way valve, cartridge valve, electro-hydraulic directional control valve and pressure exchange pipes for the recoverer.
the center was the first to develop a plug-in valve-controlled energy recoverer with daily production capacity of 1,000 tons of fresh water. the unit has small reversing pressure and flow fluctuations, with single unit concentrated seawater treatment capacity of 65 cubic meters per hour, energy recovery rate of 97.7 percent and noise level at 78 decibels.
the new technology was first applied in a 1,000-ton seawater desalination project in zhejiang’s zhoushan city in august 2010, with energy costs 4 to 6 percent lower than the energy recoverer imported from the us, marking that china has become one of the few countries that has grasped seawater desalination energy recovery technology.
at the moment, the technology has applied for more than 20 national patents and seen more than 10 relevant academic papers published. the homemade energy recoverers have been used in many desalination and chemical water treatment projects in zhejiang’s dongtou, daishan and putuo, forcing the imported equipment price down by approximately 20 percent. it has helped break the overseas monopoly in energy recoverer and plays an important role in raising competitiveness of china’s seawater desalination industry.