Water Treatment and Purification

Wastewater Treatment and Potable Water Production

A variety of technologies, including reverse osmosis (RO), ultraviolet treatment (UV), ozonation (O3), chlorine dioxide (ClO2), carbon filtration (CF), and ultrafiltration (UF), have been proposed and practiced for production of potable water and treatment of wastewater. However, application of these processes for surface water disinfection are usually too slow (UV, O3, CF, UF), heavily infrastructure dependent (RO, O3, UV, ClO2), lacking in general applicability towards a variety of chemical and biological contaminants (RO, O3, UV, CF, UF), and often unacceptable in terms of disinfection efficiency (RO, O3, UV, CF). Consequentially, these processes fail to offer a robust and decisively applicable solution addressing all the pertinent sanitary and safety issues associated with the generation of clean water and remediation of waste and contaminated water: complete disinfection, ability to purify fresh, brackish, and salt water, zero residuals of disinfection chemicals, complete absence of disinfection byproducts (DBPs), decisively efficient removal of heavy metal compounds, absolute avoidance of carcinogens and their precursors such as trihalomethane (THM) and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), total lack of color and turbidity, and total elimination of odor, to name a few. In order to address all these issues of crucial importance to the safety and well-being of our emergency responders, soldiers, and residents in waterway-contaminated areas, a breakthrough technology for water sanitation and decontamination must be developed, which is robust and decisive in an all inclusive treatment capability, yet built on an integrated single-train system that is compact, rugged, and deployable.

The developed process is a novel, decisively efficient, readily scalable, and robust water reclamation and purification process based on advanced supercritical water oxidative decontamination and concurrent inorganic precipitation separation. Based on our group’s extensive experience with supercritical water oxidation and water treatment, the conceptualized process is uniquely capable of accomplishing all of the aforementioned requirements with revolutionary efficiency. A U.S. patent was awarded for this novel process treatment technology and its associated systems.

  • S. Lee, A. Garcia, and J. Wootton, “Systems for Water Purification through Supercritical Oxidation“, U.S. Patent No. 7,186,345, March 6, 2007.

The current technology can be integrated with our chlorine dioxide technology, thereby producing premium drinking water using literally any source or quality of environmental water.

The Chlorine Dioxide (ClO2) Technology has been around for a long time based on its outstanding merits of safe and effective disinfection of water sources.  However, most ClO2 technologies being used and offered in the field are lacking in their product purities and generate a variety of undesirable chlorine derivatives as side products.  The ClO2 technologies offered by the Worrell Water Technologies are the only viable and proven process technologies for pure chlorine dioxide manufacture and field application.  The technology can be applied in any scale of production capacity, i.e., ranging from ultra-large (for large municipal water plants) to very small and portable units (for individuals).  Furthermore, the products can be made in aqueous solution as well as in convenient gel forms. The technology is protected by U.S. patents as well as an extensive list of foreign patents and all patents as well as associated knowhows have been fully assigned to Worrell Water Technologies.  Dr. Lee’s team developed this break-through technology with full financial sponsorship by and in close collaboration with Worrell Water Technologies.  The Worrell Water Technologies’ ClO2 technology is offered as Curoxin technology.

  • S. Lee, “Method and Apparatus for Making Aqueous Chlorine Dioxide”, U. S. Patent No. 5,855,861, January 5, 1999.
  • S. Lee and H. B. Lanterman, “Apparatus for Making Aqueous Chlorine Dioxide and Apparatus for Treating Water with Aqueous Chlorine Dioxide”, U.S. Patent No. 6,051,135, April 18, 2000.
  • S. Lee and P. Roberts, “Chlorine Dioxide Gel and Associated Methods”, U.S. Patent No. 7,229,647, June 12, 2007.

For further reading, please visit the Chlorine Dioxide Technology page of this website.