Over the past several years the Santa Ana Watershed Project Authority (SAWPA) and the
Chino Basin Desalter Authority (CDA) have been developing the Integrated
Chino/Arlington Desalination System (ICADS) project to remediate the Chino Basin
groundwater and in the process create a new local source of high quality potable water
for the southwestern region of the Inland Empire, encompassing areas of both Riverside
and San Bernardino Counties. Two critical aspects of the ICADS project involve the
expansion of the Chino I Desalter, an existing reverse osmosis (RO) treatment plant, and
the construction of the new Chino II Desalter, both of which must treat a groundwater
supply with high concentrations of nitrate and total dissolved solids (TDS). The elevated
nitrate concentrations, the result of the infiltration of runoff from large agricultural
operations in the vicinity, are of particular concern, as levels could potentially exceed
200 mg/L (as nitrate), over four times the maximum contaminant level (MCL) and some
of the nation's highest concentrations for a municipal drinking water source. An
innovative process of utilizing RO and single pass ion exchange (IX) in parallel was
determined to be the optimum solution to reduce TDS and nitrate to produce high quality
potable water. Under this treatment scheme, since nitrate removal via IX is operationally
less expensive, the flow to this process is maximized. The balance of the flow is treated
via RO, which removes a very high level of TDS (including nitrate). The innovative
treatment scheme and collaborative approach adopted for the Chino I and II Desalters is
helping to enable the ICADS project to both remediate the Chino basin groundwater and
provide the customers of the CDA member agencies with a high quality local supply of
drinking water to meet the needs of numerous rapidly growing southern California
communities. Includes 6 references, tables, figures.
| Edition : | Vol. - No. |
| File Size : | 1
file
, 260 KB |
| Note : | This product is unavailable in Ukraine, Russia, Belarus |
| Number of Pages : | 9 |
| Published : | 06/15/2003 |
