Experimental and Mathematical Modelling of Reverse Osmosis System to Investigate the Impact of Feed Water Pressure: a Case Study

Abstract

Reverse Osmosis (RO) system has become the most practiced technique in the last six decades to desalinate brine and make saline water safe to drink. This paper presents an experimental and modelled set-up of an RO pilot system to monitor the impact of feed water pressure on various thermodynamics parameters of borehole water collected from Ain El Atti, Errachidia, Morocco. The initial testing to check the quality of water confirmed the presence of a high number of dissolved salts in borehole water. The experimental set-up was being installed at the LPHE-modelling and simulations laboratory at the Faculty of Sciences, Mohammed V University, Rabat, Morocco. The study deals with monitoring the impact of feed water pressure on parameters of permeate including salinity (TDS), flow rate (Q), Specific Energy Consumption (SEC), recovery rate (Y) and Retention Rate (TR). The results showed some mixed impact of feed pressure on all parameters ranging from linear positive to linear negative relation. Furthermore, the results also showed that the simulation model showed high validity of the results with experimental results, which showed the accuracy of model.