International Business Briefs: membrane filtration, UV treatment, green power consultants, and biotechnology

New York-based Pall Corporation has announced that its new Septra Crypto Barrier membrane water filtration system is being used to provide up to four million extra gallons of drinking water per day to drought stricken Virginia. The city of Roanoke in Virginia has been unable to use its second largest water resource, Crystal Spring, since May 2000, but now, thanks to the membrane technology protozoan cysts such as Giardia and Cryptosporidium can be removed, says Pall.

Canadian company Trojan Technologies Inc has announced that it has received a CA$15 million (US$9.6 million) contract for ultra violet treatment systems to ensure that water being used to replenish groundwater systems in Orange County, California, do not contain N-nitrosodimethylamine (NDMA) and are completely disinfected. A demonstration system is scheduled for installation in early 2003, and a full-scale system will then be installed in the autumn of the following year.

San Diego-based green marketing company Econergy International and wind energy company SeaWest have announced that they are joining forces with a new co-marketing agreement to strengthen each company’s green power consulting service offerings.

And finally, calling all biotechnologists. The Journal of Industrial Ecology is calling for papers on the environmental impacts – good or bad – of the increased use of bio-based materials and fuels, including biopolymers, bio-ethanol, biodiesel and bulk commodity chemicals and intermediates derived from biomass. The journal notes that several recent studies have cast doubt on the environmental desirability of bio-based materials, and have highlighted the need for systems-based analyses.