Abstract
Reverse osmosis is the leading process in seawater desalination. However, it is still an energy intensive technology. Feed spacer geometry design is a key factor in reverse osmosis spiral wound membrane module performance. Correlations obtained from experimental work and computational fluid dynamics modeling were used in a computational tool to simulate the impact of different feed spacer geometries in seawater reverse osmosis spiral wound membrane modules with different permeability coefficients in pressure vessels with 6, 7 and 8 elements. The aim of this work was to carry out a comparative analysis of the effect of different feed spacer geometries in combination with the water and solute permeability coefficients on seawater reverse osmosis spiral wound membrane modules performance. The results showed a higher impact of feed spacer geometries in the membrane with the highest production (highest water permeability coefficient). It was also found that the impact of feed spacer geometry increased with the number of spiral wound membrane modules in series in the pressure vessel. Installation of different feed spacer geometries in reverse osmosis membranes depending on the operating conditions could improve the performance of seawater reverse osmosis systems in terms of energy consumption and permeate quality.
Highlights
Seawater desalination has become one of the main solutions to the worldwide problem of water scarcity
This paper aims to simulate a pressure vessels (PVs) with full-scale seawater RO (SWRO) spiral-wound membrane modules (SWMMs) under a range of feed flow (Qf ), feed pressure
Higher R values are reached with lower pf than with the SW30XHR-400, but the operating window is wider for the SW30XHR-400 than the SW30XLE-400 (Figure 2a,b)
Summary
Seawater desalination has become one of the main solutions to the worldwide problem of water scarcity. In spiral-wound membrane modules (SWMMs), the permeability coefficients have a significant impact on plant performance in terms of production and solute rejection [9,10]. Important efforts are being made to try to inhibit the effect of fouling on the permeability coefficients during plant operation by improving the pretreatment process [11] and increasing the resistance to fouling [12]. Another important characteristic of SWRO SWMMs is the feed spacer geometry (FSG) [13,14]. The FSG plays an important role in the concentration polarization (CP) phenomena and the pressure drop along the SWMMs [15,16,17]
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