Indonesian Researcher Develops Tomography Technology For Drinking Water Treatment

Jakarta (Antara Bali) - An Indonesian scientist, who is also a lecturer at the Faculty of Agricultural Technology, Brawijaya University in Malang, East Java, has developed an Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) technology for drinking water treatment.

"OCT has been used for medical purposes, in particular for diagnosis in the fields of ophthalmology, optometry, neurology, gynecology, gastroenterology, oncology, cardiology, and also dermatology," Yusuf Wibisono noted in a statement received by Antara here, Wednesday.

He explained that the OCT technology is used to scan a micrometer-sized object and produce a three-dimensional image of it.

The application of OCT in non-medical fields is useful in mitigating the formation of biofilm on membrane modules, which are used in drinking water treatment.

According to Wibisono, the non-medical applications of OCT are still rather new in the world.

He recently presented the results of his research on the non-medical applications of OCT using membrane technology at the second International Conference on Desalination in Singapore.

His research competed with studies conducted by researchers from Singapore, Finland, and the Netherlands.

At the end of the conference, he was elected to visit the Tuaspring desalination plant in Singapore.

The Tuaspring desalination plant has been operating since 2013 and is the largest seawater desalination plant in Asia, with a production capacity of 318,500 cubic meters of drinking water per day.

With such a large-sized desalination plant, Singapore is ready to guarantee the resilience of its water resources and to be independent in providing drinking water to its people.

"The seawater treatment plant is guarded by armed security personnel," Wibisono noted.

This installation uses ultra-filtration technology for the pretreatment of seawater and two-phase reverse osmosis membrane technology using high and low pressure in order to remove salt from seawater and produce high-quality drinking water. (WDY)