The Indian Wells Valley Water District (IWVWD) is located in Ridgecrest, California, in northeast Kern
County, about 120 miles from Los Angeles. It represents a true in-land location for a possible
desalination facility, with no access to the ocean for concentrate disposal. Part of IWVWD's mission is
to explore alternative drinking water sources, including treatment of poorer quality water from within
the Indian Wells Valley, such as the brackish water (TDS around 2,000 mg/L) from their Northwest
Well Field (NWWF). This work forms part of a desalination investigation and preliminary design
undertaken for IWVWD.
Treating brackish water implies a desalting process, and therefore production of a concentrate stream. In
this case, due to the in-land location, there are some significant challenges associated with the brine
disposal. Twelve different desalting trains and associated brine treatment and disposal processes were
evaluated to result in a zero-liquid-discharge (ZLD) configuration.
This project evaluated water quality from four existing wells in the NWWF, which was used as a basis
for process evaluations. The groundwater is complex in nature, with moderate salinity and high levels of
sparingly soluble salts (such as calcium carbonate and calcium sulfate) and silica. It also contains a
number of contaminants that exceed certain drinking water Maximum Contaminant Levels (MCLs).
The study was undertaken to determine potential desalting treatment trains that would be able to treat a
worst-case blend of well water to drinking water standards. An evaluation was performed, based on
predetermined criteria, to screen and select the most promising treatment train for the IWVWD to
implement. This treatment train would recover over 98 percent of the NWWF water as drinking water,
and discharge the remainder to a small evaporation pond.
Mass balance models were developed in order to establish preliminary sizes of each of the unit
processes. From the unit sizes, both capital and operating cost estimates were made. Includes reference, tables.
| Edition : | Vol. - No. |
| File Size : | 1
file
, 350 KB |
| Note : | This product is unavailable in Ukraine, Russia, Belarus |
| Number of Pages : | 9 |
| Published : | 03/01/2007 |
