Self-Cleaning Filter Technology for Wastewater Treatment Inspired by Baleen Whales

Innovation: Industry

Baleen Filters Pty Limited

1999

Image: Todd Cravens / Unsplash / CC BY SA - Creative Commons Attribution + ShareAlike

Detoxification/Purification of Air/Water/Waste

Ecosystems must be effective at cleaning air, water, and waste because so much of what is in the air, water, and waste is valuable to organisms as resources. In contrast to functions that detoxify or purify at the organism level, this is at a larger scale. To be effective at the ecosystem level, it isn’t the individual efforts of a few organisms that detoxifies and purifies, but the actions of a wide diversity of organisms each contributing to the whole. For example, as water flows through an ecosystem, either aboveground or in the soil, a diversity of organisms take different actions to slow it down, capture excess nutrients from it, and break down harmful chemicals into more benign ones.

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Capture, Absorb, or Filter Liquids

The most common liquid used by living systems is water, which they require to survive. But there are many other liquids that provide nourishment, play a role in defense mechanisms, or serve other purposes. Water varies in its availability; it is sometimes plentiful and sometimes very scarce or only available as fog or mist. To minimize the energy required to capture, absorb, or filter liquids, living systems have strategies that take advantage of the unique properties of the given liquid. For example, water moves from a gaseous to liquid state when it encounters a surface colder than the air. Plants in forests that experience fog and clouds more than rain have strategies that condense liquid water from moist air.

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Capture, Absorb, or Filter Solids

Some living systems must secure solid particles such as sediment, usually to keep the particles from hindering their health or activity. The most common way in which they do this is through filtering. To be effective, a filtering system must be appropriate to the sizes of solid particles to be captured and must capture only what is needed. It must also be effective in the appropriate media–air, water, or sometimes solids like soil. An example is mangroves, which are trees that grow along ocean coasts. Their root system slows down and settles sediment out of the water, building up soil to support the mangrove ecosystem.

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Capture, Absorb, or Filter Chemical Entities

Living systems often require chemical elements and chemical compounds, including complex sugars, proteins, and odor-making compounds, to perform critical activities. These compounds exist in various states–solid, liquid, and gas–and are ubiquitous in soil, water, and air. This requires that living systems not only have ways to capture, absorb, or filter them, but also ways to differentiate among them, selecting those that are valuable or harmful. For example, mangrove trees live with their roots in salty water and sediments. Various mangrove species have different strategies for removing salt from the water they take in so that their tissues can use the fresh water.

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Brochures

Baleen Filters Information
453.7 KB PDF

Patents

WO1998023357A1
1.1 MB PDF

Baleen Filters from Baleen Filters Pty Limited use self-cleaning filters to clean wastewater without the use of chemicals.

Benefits

Reduced chemical use
Reduced energy use

Applications

Agriculture
Food & Beverage industry
Municipal sewage

UN Sustainable Development Goals Addressed

Goal 6: Clean Water & Sanitation

The Challenge

More than 80% of waste waters (some 1,500 billion tons every year) flow untreated into rivers, lakes, and coastal zones, threatening health, food security, and access to safe drinking and bathing water. Traditional wastewater treatments require the use of fossil fuels or thermal energy to separate and filter wastewater.

Innovation Details

The Baleen Filter is a self-cleaning filter technology that cleans large amounts of wastewater without using chemicals. It uses pressurized water to push wastewater through a mesh screen, which separates water from solids, similarly to a baleen whale.

Biological Model

Baleen is a filter-feeding mechanism found inside the mouths of baleen whales. Mostly made of keratin—the same substance found in human fingernails and hair—baleen is similar to the bristles on a brush. Because Baleen whales feed on small organisms such as plankton and fish, they need to capture and eat as many of them as they can at one time. When a baleen whale consumes a huge mouthful of krill, fish, and water, it partially shuts its jaws and then presses its tongue against its upper jaw to force the water through the baleen, leaving the krill and fish on the inside of its mouth. This enables the whale to capture and strain large amounts of food while keeping its baleen clean and free from long-term deposits.

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