This rinse water reclaim case study contains several valuable lessons. Membranes play a staring role in rinse reclaim, system failures are more often the fault of the system design, and when properly executed, rinse reclaim proves that conservation pays. This system was design at the request of Fosta-Tek Optics, Inc. a specialty lens manufacturer in Leominster Massachusetts. Their production volume has been growing steadily for the past few years and jumped dramatically after 9/11 with a rush of orders for riot shields, gas mask lenses and the like. The once through heated DI rinse water system was becoming burdensome. Fosta-Tek had attempted a recycle system conceived and executed by their staff with disastrous results. The system produced "slime" that left the lenses dirty, killed the DI tanks, and caused frequent shutdowns to dump the system water and clean the wash tanks. Other components of the system failed on a regular basis resulting in high maintenance levels. In addition to these woes, the product water was not that great.
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