Characterization of scalants and strategies for scaling mitigation in membrane distillation of alkaline concentrated circulating cooling water

Abstract

Treatment of circulating cooling water via reverse osmosis for water reuse is attractive. However, the discharge of the concentrated circulating cooling water (CCCW) is still an issue to environment. In this paper, direct contact membrane distillation (DCMD) was exploited to treat alkaline CCCW for water reclamation and volume reduction. Results suggested that the alkaline CCCW can be concentrated to achieve high volume concentration factor. DCMD performance decline was primarily due to calcium carbonate (CaCO3) scaling. The CaCO3 deposited on the membrane surface was identified as calcite. Various strategies were adopted to mitigate membrane scaling. Acidization of the CCCW can effectively improve system performance. Additionally, the main scalant transformed from CaCO3 to calcium sulfate (CaSO4) with initial pH decrease. Physical cleaning using deionized water can effectively remove CaSO4 and restore DCMD performance. Compared with commercial antiscalants (sodium polyaspartic acid and amino trimethylene phosphonic acid), EDTA showed excellent scale-inhibition performance. The calcium and magnesium in the CCCW were efficiently pre-removed by chemical softening and ion exchange methods, resulting in improvement of DCMD performance. Given scale inhibition and chemical agent costs, chemical softening was the best strategy to alleviate membrane scaling. Our work suggested that DCMD can be selected as a promising approach for treating the high alkaline CCCW combined with proper strategies to control membrane scaling.