Seawater Reverse Osmosis (RO) desalination plants operating with surface open intakes require
an efficient pretreatment to meet RO system feed water quality requirements, and insure reliable
operating conditions.
Several studies performed for this application present results of ultrafiltration (UF) or microfiltration
(MF) as RO desalination process pretreatment obtained on several seawater resources. They
demonstrate generally good performances in terms of permeate quality and membrane fouling
control. UF/MF operation limits may appear on some seawaters, and pretreatment membranes
fouling can be expected while facing important seawater pollution. Moreover, membrane only is
sometimes a pretreatment limited to remove dissolved pollution and organics, and to insure a low
SDI value.
While conventional direct filtration gives reliable results and good surface water quality, a single
stage filtration process using conventional media could not produce filtered water with a SDI value
below 3, 100% of the time for the treatment of seawaters with relatively high fouling (SDI values
averaging 15-20), leading to at least, a second filtration stage to reach this target.
The objectives of this paper are to present a comparative analysis of both conventional and
membrane pretreatments upstream reverse osmosis on open intake seawater. The data used are
coming from literature reviews and from pilot studies performed on high fouling potential surface
seawater showing periodical degradations in terms of suspended solids, SDI or hydrocarbon
pollution. On one site, specific spike tests were conducted to evaluate the pre-treatment efficiency
during pollution events. The pilot tests were performed using in parallel membrane and
conventional pretreatments.
Includes 21 references, tables.
| Edition : | Vol. - No. |
| File Size : | 1
file
, 350 KB |
| Note : | This product is unavailable in Ukraine, Russia, Belarus |
| Number of Pages : | 6 |
| Published : | 03/01/2005 |
