Abstract
Seawater desalination plants that use reverse osmosis (RO) membranes have become a core part of social infrastructure, and should be designed to meet the needs of product water quality and production capacity, while considering various environmental factors such as the seawater quality, temperature and geographical features. Furthermore, stable operation while overcoming various problems should be achieved alongside the increasing demands for energy saving and cost reduction. As no universal plant apparatus and operation technology meets these various requirements, the plants need to be customized for individual solutions. This paper reviews and summarizes the proven technologies, including their advantages/disadvantages, and points to cutting-edge technologies related to the design and operation maintenance of seawater intake, pre-treatment and the RO desalination process.
Highlights
High Performance of Seawater reverse osmosis (RO)The RO membrane was invented in 1960 by S
Pre-treated seawater is normally supplied to the RO process via a safety cartridge filter (SF), which consists of 1–20 micron filters to protect high pressure pumps and RO membranes from damage by fragments that leak through the upper flow
Precise pore size control technology is important because there is a strong relation between the pore size of the RO membrane measured by positron annihilation lifetime spectroscopy (PALS) and boron rejection of the RO membrane [4,66]
Summary
The RO membrane was invented in 1960 by S. MED has many advantages, such as higher thermodynamic efficiency and lower temperature, allowing use of low cost materials and heat energy. Such distillation methods were the main technologies used for seawater desalination in the world until the 2000s (see Figure 1 [2,3]). For freshwater production from seawater via a SWRO membrane, the sum of the osmotic pressure of seawater and the pressure for membrane permeation needs to be applied to seawater Such pressure is very high (currently 5–7 MPa), and significantly impacts the energy consumption and operating costs of the desalination plant. 2020 [2,3]
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