Fuzzy logic control of a brackish water reverse osmosis desalination process

Abstract

In recent years, the desalination of seawater and brackish water by the reverse osmosis (RO) process became one of the alternatives to ensure a dependable supply of drinking water. Due to its sensitivity to the feed water quality and the plant operating conditions, the RO desalination process needs an efficient and accurate control system to maintain operation at optimum conditions that ensure the least energy utilization and prevent scaling and fouling membranes.After modeling the RO process, this work uses a fuzzy logic control to regulate the operating parameters of a brackish water desalination plant by the RO process (based on the double-pass configuration).Computer simulation using Matlab/Simulink as a virtual process is conducted to confirm the performance of the proposed algorithm.