Your Questions and the company's response in bold-
Thanks rebelgirl, I'm learning quite a bit about the clarifier, interesting. Some key points, the clarifier does need power to operate the pumps and mixers.
Of course it does
It does need chemicals in order for the seperation process to work properly. It does put out a secondary byproduct of toxic sludge that will need to be treated at the site. Have they addressed this at all?
When the clarifier/purifier is used to produce safe drinking water from a polluted natural surface water source the sludge that is produced is not only NOT toxic, it is actually a rich mixture of organic suspended materials that can be composted and used as a fertilizer-type product in agriculture, horticulture or landscaping. The ingredients of the sludge would have formerly, in the source water been described as suspended solids. Since the source water, say from a lake or river, is also usually contaminated with pathogens (bacteria and/or viruses, parasites etc.) our on-board sanitization process disinfects the water without the use of any potentially harmful chemicals such as chlorine.
When the clarifier/purifier is used in wastewater treatment, there may or may not be some toxic elements in the sludge. Should they be present, these are treatable in a variety of methods that would reduce the toxicity levels to acceptable disposal standards. A variety of technologies are available.
An important thing to consider is that each source water, or wastewater is unique. Our process is designed so that it is flexible enough to adapt to a variety of treatment requirements.
The unit is not being marketed as, and has not been tested as a treatment system for industrial toxic waste. Future plans would include such testing.
So far this is just to clean up the dirty water, not safe for human consumption at this point.
Not true at all. Each and every demonstration that we have conducted on drinking water production through 2008 from a variety of natural surface water sources has produced high quality safe drinking water. Please refer to our published lab reports.
In order to be safe for drinking they will have to use a secondary RO system and ultraviolet system. The RO part of the deal will need filters changed on a regular basis, so as far as making drinking water this system is not filterless.
Not true at all. The Purio process uses no membrane filtration and no UV system whatsoever to produce perfectly sterile, high quality drinking water from contaminated surface water sources. Even our wastewater demonstration (from which we published the lab reports) produced totally sanitary product water that was perfectly colorless and odorless, without any membrane filtration or UV. If our product water were run through a RO system it would upgrade the water quality from "drinking water" to "purified water".
Also, in remote areas and other countries has the issue of service and maintenance been addressed? How will they get parts when a breakdown occurs?
A dealer network would work.
Also, this unit can not be used in freezing climates unless it's somehow enclosed and heated. I would like to discuss these technical issues if anyones interested.
I'm not aware of any water handling system that can operate in a freezing climate unless it is somehow enclosed or heated. The problem seems to be that water freezes at 0 degrees C (32 degrees F).
