Abstract
There is an increasing need for the desalination of high concentration brine (>TDS 35,000 ppm) efficiently and economically, either for the treatment of produced water from shale gas/oil development, or minimizing the environmental impact of brine from existing desalination plants. Yet, reverse osmosis (RO), which is the most widely used for desalination currently, is not practical for brine desalination. This paper demonstrates technical and economic feasibility of ICP (Ion Concentration Polarization) electrical desalination for the high saline water treatment, by adopting multi-stage operation with better energy efficiency. Optimized multi-staging configurations, dependent on the brine salinity values, can be designed based on experimental and numerical analysis. Such an optimization aims at achieving not just the energy efficiency but also (membrane) area efficiency, lowering the true cost of brine treatment. ICP electrical desalination is shown here to treat brine salinity up to 100,000 ppm of Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) with flexible salt rejection rate up to 70% which is promising in a various application treating brine waste. We also demonstrate that ICP desalination has advantage of removing both salts and diverse suspended solids simultaneously, and less susceptibility to membrane fouling/scaling, which is a significant challenge in the membrane processes.
Highlights
The majority of technology development efforts for water desalination so far have focused on the treatment of seawater or brackish ground water, while brine has received relatively little attention
This significantly adds to the overall brine treatment cost, making the treatment of brine and produced water difficult to justify economically in many situations. Both reverse osmosis (RO) and distillation processes are designed for complete salt removal, a partial brine desalination process is worth consideration as optimal solutions. This is because (1) the main purpose of brine treatment is often lowering the salinity to a certain degree for reuse or discharge[10], and (2) one can consider other economical desalination options, once salinity of brine waste is reduced to near seawater salinity[11]
Since majority of ions existed in salty water sources are sodium and chloride (DNa+ = 1.33, DCl− = 2.03[10−9 m2 s−1]), ion concentration polarization (ICP) utilizing cation exchange membrane (CEM) can enhance salt removal ratio up to 20% compared to electrodialysis under constant current applied, along with other advantages compared with related electrodialysis technique[19]
Summary
The majority of technology development efforts for water desalination so far have focused on the treatment of seawater or brackish ground water, while brine (water with higher salinity than 35,000 mg/L TDS) has received relatively little attention. This significantly adds to the overall brine treatment cost, making the treatment of brine and produced water difficult to justify economically in many situations Both RO and distillation processes are designed for complete salt removal, a partial brine desalination process is worth consideration as optimal solutions. Since majority of ions existed in salty water sources (e.g. seawater, produced water) are sodium and chloride (DNa+ = 1.33, DCl− = 2.03[10−9 m2 s−1]), ICP utilizing CEMs can enhance salt removal ratio up to 20% compared to electrodialysis under constant current applied, along with other advantages compared with related electrodialysis technique[19] Motivated by this analysis, we continue to develop and customize ICP desalination for high salinity water treatment further. Unique advantages of ICP desalination over the conventional electrodialysis, such as processability of suspended solids and operation stability/durability, are demonstrated
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
