Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
Desalination
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/desal
H I G H L I G H T S
Reverse osmosis (RO) water desalination has been getting very popular worldwide.
Conventional pretreatment operational cost is lower than non-conventional systems.
Non-conventional (membrane) pretreatment systems produce better water quality.
Membrane pretreatment capital cost increased by 2040% upon feed water quality.
NF is a better pretreatment method when compared to conventional and UF.
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Article history:
Received 10 April 2014
Received in revised form 10 September 2014
Accepted 11 September 2014
Available online xxxx
Keywords:
Reverse osmosis
Pretreatment
Desalination
Fouling
Cost
a b s t r a c t
Recent research reports have underlined reverse osmosis (RO) as the most optimized technology for water desalination related applications. However, implementing this technology to seawater desalination is facing
challenges of membrane fouling. This includes membrane biofouling, organic and inorganic fouling which
adversely affect the process performance and overall treatment cost. To overcome these issues, pretreatment
units ahead of the RO system are necessary to reduce RO membrane fouling and enhance its operational efciency. This article aimed at reviewing the literature and summarizing relevant methods, mechanisms and novel
developments which improve the performance of the RO systems when coupled with either conventional or
non-conventional pretreatment units. Several studies suggested that the non-conventional pretreatment units
were more efcient than the conventional systems for producing better water quality and minimizing the overall
treatment cost. Ultraltration appeared to be a cost effective and efcient method of removing suspended solids
(SS) and bacteria. The advent of nanostructured membranes nanoltration has the potential of becoming preferred non-conventional desalination pretreatment over a wide range of salinity, total dissolved solids (TDS),
inorganics, viruses, etc.
2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Contents
1.
2.
3.
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Coupling RO with conventional technologies . . . . . . . . . . .
2.1.
Chlorination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2.2.
Clarication/dissolved air oatation (DAF) . . . . . . . .
2.3.
Ozonation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2.4.
Coagulationocculation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2.5.
Scale inhibitors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Reverse osmosis with non-conventional pretreatment technologies .
3.1.
Ultraltration (UF) and microltration (MF) . . . . . . .
3.2.
Nanoltration (NF) and nanostructured membranes . . . .
3.2.
Potential use of MBRs as RO pretreatment . . . . . . . .
Corresponding author. Tel.: +971 2 810 9237; fax: +971 2 810 9901.
E-mail address: swajih@masdar.ac.ae (S.W. Hasan).
1
Tel.: +971 2 810 9237; fax: +971 2 810 9901.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.desal.2014.09.017
0011-9164/ 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
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31
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4.
Economical aspects of RO with pretreatment technologies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
5.
Conclusions and recommendations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1. Introduction
There're almost 26 countries that lack access to pure water resources
to sustain agricultural and economic developments, and more or less
one billion people have been deprived of pure drinking water. Middle
East is among those regions where fresh water scarcity has severely
affected agricultural capability and public life. Not to mention that the
demand for pure water will dramatically increases according to the
world statistics forecasting 4050% population growth over the next
50 years. Thus, conservation and recycling of water for consumption
can minimize the problem to some extent [76]. More or less, 98% of
the available water in the world isn't available for direct consumption
due to salinity. As water scarcity in many regions of the world is becoming an undeniable fact, efforts have been made to develop technologies
for alternative water resources. Thermal desalination processes have
been a great option, yet require high capital and operating costs due
to installation, maintenance, and energy used. Toward minimizing the
overall desalination cost, reverse osmosis membrane ltration (RO)
has been widely used and is recently becoming an important alternative
source of clean water [63]. There're more than 15,000 desalination
plants around the world providing fresh water from saline water
through which this number will continue to rise as researchers work
to improve the process, both in terms of cost effectiveness and energy
efciency.
Desalination can be traced in history as back as in 1558. Giovani
Batista Della Porta (15351615) mentions three desalination systems
in his books, Magiae Naturalis subsequently translated into French, Italian and German languages. During 1589, in the second edition, he described seven methods of desalination, including a solar distillation
apparatus that converted brackish water into fresh water. He also explained a method to obtain fresh water from the air by dehumidication
later reported by Delyannis [27]. The phenomenon of osmotic pressure
was rst observed by the French Cleric, Abb6 Nollet in 1748 [70], while
the rst semi-permeable membrane was prepared by traube in 1867.
This gelatinous lm of copper ferrocyanide supported on a porous clay
frit displayed remarkable selectivity to dilute solutions of electrolytes
had in fact pioneered the ultraltration as a technology. Many of the
RO and nanoltration (NF) membranes used these days are primarily
condensation polymers whose origin began with the rst synthesis of
nylon.
Hassler [47] marked the beginning of membrane research at the university level. In his report, entitled The Sea as the Sea as a Source of Fresh
Water, Hassler mentioned the possibility of vapor transfer through
sheets of cellophane. In a subsequent report, he described salt repelling
osmotic membranes and permselective lms. It is believed that this
historic unpublished document, dated August, 1950, introduced the
rst concept of membrane desalination. By the mid-1960s, two major
chemical companies, Dow Chemical and DuPont, acknowledged the
scope of large-scale membrane desalination. Both rms initiated R&D
efforts which resulted in the development of hollow ber desalination
modules. The Dow concept involved cellulose acetate bers as reported
by Bray [16], while DuPont focused on polyamides. Due to the core
problems faced during the operational performance of desalination systems; it was important to understand the membrane foulingphenomenon, causes and mechanism.
Ning et al. [67] divided commonly occurring fouling scales into two
major classes, a) hard scales and b) soft amorphous complexes.
Among these typically brackish waters, scale foulants are calcium carbonate, calcium sulfate, strontium sulfate, barium sulfate, calcium
31
35
36
37
32
et al. [88] concluded that the use of a xed lm aerobic biolter could
reduce the natural organic matters (NOMs) in the bulk solution, therefore, enhancing the membrane performance. Furthermore, Choi et al.
[22] and Belfer et al. [11] worked on surface modications of RO membrane, while Murugan et al. [65] and Ebrahim et al. [34] focused on conventional pretreatment techniques.
One of the limitations of the RO membrane desalination is to treat
efuents with a very low concentration of suspended solids to minimize
the problems associated with membrane fouling [38]. As a result, the
efciency of the desalination process is reduced as increasing the
osmotic pressure may increase the overall energy consumption. Therefore, the need for an appropriate pretreatment method becomes inevitable to ensure the feasibility and efciency of RO systems. Several
research investigations revealed that pretreatment technologies ahead
of the RO membrane desalination could have positive effects on the
overall operational performance such as minimizing membrane fouling,
increasing the removal of suspended solids and dissolved organic matters from sea waters. These pretreatment technologies may be conventional such as coagulation, occulation and scale inhibition or nonconventional such as ultraltration (UF), microltration (MF) and
nanoltration (NF).
The selection of the pretreatment technology is of a great importance while treating various types of saline waters by using diverse pretreatment strategies. In this article, an overview of the performance of
different RO membrane desalination systems coupled with various pretreatment technologies is summarized in the subsequent sections.
2. Coupling RO with conventional technologies
Comprehensive understanding of the raw water quality and characteristics, and type of water resource (e.g. surface water, brackish water,
sea water and industrial saline water) is essential to select the appropriate pretreatment technology ahead of the RO system. For instance, surface waters have high turbidities, SDI, and NOMs as compared to water
from the well source due to adsorption and ltration effect on underground water reserves. Similarly, well waters contain high silica content
than surface waters. The initially large particles, which may be pumped
from the well, are removed from the feed water using mesh strainers or
traveling screens. Traveling screens are more useful for surface water
sources, which typically have large concentrations of biological debris.
The conventional pretreatment process may consist of all or some of
the following treatment steps:
2.1. Chlorination
Pre-chlorination is the process of adding chlorine to the raw water
after screening and before ash mixing. The residual chlorine is useful
in several stages of the treatment processaiding in coagulation, controlling algae problems in basins, reducing odor problems, and controlling mud ball formation. In addition, chlorine has a much longer contact
time when added at the beginning of the treatment process, so prechlorination increases safety in disinfecting heavily contaminated
water. Until the middle of the 1970s, water treatment plants typically
used both pre-chlorination and post-chlorination. However, the longer
contact time provided by pre-chlorination allows chlorine to react
2.4. Coagulationocculation
The conventional technologies (coagulationocculation, disinfection, pH adjustment, scale inhibition, and ltration with granular
media) can be applied as pretreatment technologies to RO membrane
systems. Coagulation has been shown to be a successful method for
improving the water quality not only in conventional pretreatment
technologies, but also in low pressure membrane pretreatment technologies [40]. A study conducted by Duan et al. [32] deduced that the use of
powdered activated carbon (PAC) offers better efciency for the humic
acid adsorption in saline water compared to fresh water as well as low
conductivity water. It was found that the removal of humic acids
depends mainly on the coagulant dose, pH, and the order of the PAC
and metal salt coagulant addition when either aluminum sulfate or
ferric chloride was added. Their results showed that the addition of
PAC before the coagulant gives better humic removal. Gabelich et al.
[40] discussed the negative effects of the coagulant residuals that result
from the pretreatment process on the performance of the RO
membrane such as aluminum sulfate, ferric chloride coagulants, and
chloramines. The experimental dose of 68 mg/L as alum was used
with 1.0l.5 mg/L polydimethyl diallylammonium chloride (polyDADMAC) cationic polymer (Ageoc WT-20; CPS Chemical Co., Old
Bridge, NJ). Ferric chloride dosed in the range of 45 mg/L (as FeCl3)
with 1.52.0 mg/L cationic polymer. A free-chlorine residual of
2.53.5 mg/L was maintained at the lter efuent while directltration modules have been used from ltration plant. Their results
showed that the use of aluminum sulfate with multiple RO elements resulted in a rapid decline in specic ux that reached up to 60% over
around 100 h of operation, as well as a clear decrease in salt rejection,
whereas an increase in the specic ux was noticed using ferric chloride
and chloramines over time. However, the salt rejection reduced signicantly during the experiment.
On the other hand, coagulation can be used efciently for arsenic
removal. Iron based coagulants found to be better compared with the
aluminum based coagulants. The iron coagulants are hydrolyzed once
they are added to water in order to form ferric hydroxide with a positive
charge. However, the net positive charge is a strong function of pH; thus
as the pH decreases, the net number of the positively charged sited on
the surface of the ferric hydroxide elements increases. Thus, the arsenic
removal is usually enhanced at pH values that are less than 7. Moreover,
for the aluminum coagulants the best results were attained at a pH
value of 5.5, and the arsenic removal was in the range of 5999% at
dosages of 0.8 to 1.9 mg/L as aluminum, respectively. Whereas, in ferric
coagulants, the study showed that best results were obtained at a pH
value of 5.5, and the arsenic removal was in the range of 70 to 99.6%
at dosages of 1.7 to 3.8 mg/L as iron, respectively [86]. Den and Wang
[28] investigated the feasibility of electrocoagulation, as a pretreatment,
to remove silica. They found that the bipolar conguration offered
better silica removal than monopolar conguration of electrochemical
coagulation setup. Moreover, membrane fouling of the pretreated
seawater, and modied fouling index (MFI) with ultraltration (UF)
was investigated in terms of molecular weight distribution (MWD)
and membrane characterization. MFI values after pretreatments of
FeCl3 occulation and PAC adsorption signicantly decreased to
6900 and 6700, and to 2300 and 2500 s/L2 for 30 and 100 kDa UF,
respectively.
33
34
Red Sea in Saudi Arabia [72]. The inlet feed turbidity to UF was found to
be in average of 4.5 NTU, and the SDI is 2.2 in the UF permeate water.
The addition of FeCl3 coagulant in phase 1 by ferric dosing of 2 ppm
and 0.7 ppm at pH 67 and a minimum contact time of 20 min maintained stable membrane permeability, consistent permeate water, and
SDI less than 3 [43,72].
The dual system UFRO was used in seawater treatment using Wang
Tan Power Plant; the permeate water quality results after UF pretreatment were: NTU N 1, SDI b 3, and 95% recovery [17]. Also, the RO membrane cleaning frequency was reduced as the water ux was between
9.5 and 16.5 LMH. The average pressure drop maintained 1.7 bar
while 180 ppm of efuent TDS was reported. Van Hoof et al. [83] introduced UFRO system for wastewater reuse related applications. Their
results showed that SDI of UF membrane was 1.8; yet operated at
2225 LMH water ux while recovering 70% of produced water.
UF pretreatment technology can be improved by adding coagulants and adsorbents. Whereas a backwashing strategy has been
employed to control different types of membrane fouling arising
from these coagulants, such as chemical enhanced backwashing
(CEB) with acid or NaOCl used to control ferric membrane fouling
and caustic CEB to control fouling due to algae. Air enhanced
backwashing can help reduce the particulate accumulation in
ber lumen based membranes, if frequency increased from once a
week to once a day [72]. YoungHong et al. [90] tested the impact
of chemical coagulation on UF membrane. Kaolinite and humic
acid (HA) were used to simulate the particles and NOM present in
source water. The results revealed that the particles and NOM compounds present in source water may have different fouling behavior, and may mitigate the irreversible fouling caused by humic acid.
The addition of coagulant can lead to a higher rate of removal of
large-sized hydrophobic compounds. Dong et al. [30] investigated
the impact and mechanism of preventing membrane fouling, by coagulation pretreatment, in terms of fractional component and molecular weight of NOM. They concluded that the coagulated ocs
could absorb neutral hydrophilic compounds resulting in an
increase in the operating ux. In addition, the application of adsorption technology has shown signicant improvements on the
operation of RO systems. Several studies proved its importance by
reducing humic acids, fulvic acids, low molecular weights matters
(LMW), and other organic matters.
Chatkaew et al. [21] determined that coupling PAC with UF membrane is a relevant pretreatment to the RO system because it removed
70% of organic matters and reduced the ux decline. Other research
study reported that backwashing and the combined PAC/UF system
were very effective in reducing a ux decline and producing a good
quality efuent when the dosage of PAC was below 20 mg/L [81].
Comparing UF with conventional pretreatment techniques, less space
can bring 30% cost saving as well as the need for RO disinfection/cleaning
to avoid considerable production loss [72]. MF pretreatment offers more
signicant improvements on the performance of the RO desalination systems. For example, Herzberg et al. [49] analyzed the effect of MF pretreatment on biofouling of RO membrane by treating secondary wastewater
efuent. They found that the salt rejection increased to 98.298.8% comparing it to RO without pretreatment (94.397%). Moreover, with MF
pretreatment, the permeate ux decline and particulate and colloidal
matter were reduced in RO while the oxygen uptake rate has increased.
Chakravorty and Layson [20] concluded that the use of polypropylene
membrane having 0.2 m pore diameter in continuous mode under a
pressure gradient of 1 bar resulted in 40% increase in water ux over traditional pretreatment methods. The study carried by Cardona et al. [19]
deduced that the energy saving in the order of 1315% has been reported.
Ahmad and Mariadas [2] investigated the impact of using tubular single
channel ceramic membranes with a nominal pore size of 0.2 m. They
found that the insertion of helical bafe increased the permeate ux
(520.8 LMH) up to 104.9% as compared to a system without bafe
using feed of 1.0 g/L TiO2 at 1.4 bar TMP.
Dey et al. [29] described the operational process at the pilot scale on
the Arabian coastal sea water using tubular ceramic membrane (average pore diameter of 0.1 m) of 19-channel conguration as pretreatment for RO system. Their results showed an increase in the permeate
ux between 350 and 370 LMH, a decrease in turbidity and SDI to 1.0
and b3, respectively while operating at xed TMP of 1.2 bar with 40 h
continuous run, using ltrate water of pressure sand lter (PSF) as
feed. Corral et al. [25] carried out a comparative study between MF
and slow sand ltration (SSF) as pretreatments prior to RO system.
They concluded that MF steadily provided ltrate with SDI b 3 while improving the long-term RO performance. Despite the economic costs of
MF and SSF pretreatments are similar; MF is preferred based on the
quality of treated water and stability of downstream RO operation.
The potential benets offered by membrane pretreatment compared
to conventional pretreatments can be summarized below:
Lower suspended solids and less biological content, resulting in improved RO operation
RO membrane cleaning cost savings in cleaning chemicals
Lower RO pressure drops from fouling, resulting in lower energy costs
Longer RO membrane life
Increased ux rates in the RO system
Shorter plant footprint size resulting in reduced capital investment
Lower chemical and sludge handling costs
3.2. Nanoltration (NF) and nanostructured membranes
Several studies have shown the evolving sequence of nanoltration
(NF) as a pretreatment stage in desalination industry; moving from
pilot to commercial/industrial scale offering an appropriate operational
technology. An earlier study carried by Al-So et al. [7] explored the
brackish water softening NF technique as a permeation pretreatment
of feed to seawater reverse osmosis (SWRO) and multi stage ash
(MSF). They concluded that total hardness was reduced by 86.5%
while chloride (CI) ion falls down from 22,780 ppm in feed seawater
to 16,692 ppm in NF permeate. Also, 26.7% reduction of Na+ and K+
ions was reported. Moreover, researchers [45,46] have demonstrated
that NF can be successfully incorporated prior to SWRO resulting in an
improved desalination efciency, reduced fouling, less frequent
cleaning of RO membrane. 6 NF spiral wound membrane elements of
size 8 40 in series connected by a SWRO unit of 3 HFF SWRO
elements 8 40 or 9 40 all in series were used. This conguration
has doubled the SWRO product water output and recovery ratio, while
producing high purity permeate (TDS b 200 ppm) during a single
stage SWRO. Their results revealed that NF can be integrated not only
at a pilot level, but also at industrial scale operations. A group of scientists [4] studied a new conguration of a NF as a pretreatment to
SWRO system at industrial unit, where in single SWRO desalination
plant was converted to a dual NFSWRO desalination process by introducing NF membrane pretreatment ahead of the SWRO desalination.
Their results showed that the permeate ow has increased signicantly
from 91.8 to 130 m3/h in a dual NFSWRO process. Recent studies [91]
provided many operational improvements using NFSWRO system.
These included 65% water recovery at pH = 6 with a low feed
pressure of b 25 bar, and 42% increase in production rate. In an effort
to avoid cleaning, NF unit was operated in Gulf seawater at ux of 12
gfd along with occasional ushing using pretreated seawater on monthly intervals without chemical cleaning up to two years.
Furthermore, modern technology has enabled exceptional control
over the fabrication of nanostructured materials, particularly, the capability to create well-dened, size-selective, nanostructured ltration
membranes. By enabling the manipulation of matter and control of
transport at nanometer length scales, the emergence of nanotechnology
offers new opportunities to advance water desalination technologies.
Size-selective membrane with pore sizes in the sub-nanometer range
are expected to allow water molecules to pass through, while ceasing
the ions that have a larger effective diameter due to their hydration
shells [44]. For example, the pore could act as a molecular sieve if the
pore diameter is smaller than that of a solvated ion (diameter of a
hydrated sodium ion is 7.6 A), yet larger than a water molecule. As
considerably high energy barrier is to strip the ion of its solvation shell
( 1709 kJ/mol for Na+) [78]; the applied pressure should be greater
than the osmotic pressure on the feed water to force the water molecules through these pores while ceasing the passage of ions. In addition
to steric exclusion, electrostatic and van der Waals interactions may be
used to achieve the desired selectivity.
Nanostructured materials that are promising for desalination
include zeolites [60,61]. They're aluminosilicate minerals with a microstructure composed of 38 A pores. Li et al. [60] used hydrothermal
synthesis to develop 0.53 m thick membranes consisting of hydrophobic MFI (mordenite framework inverted) type zeolites with an
average pore diameter of 5.6 A on a porous -alumina support. Their
results showed that those membranes have rejected 76% of Na+ ions
while permitting a water ux of 0.112 kg/m2 h. Carbon nanotubes [51]
and graphene [9,56,77] can be synthesized to have non-twisting pores
of the order of 1 nm or less and can be fabricated into macroscopic arrays. In addition to its electronic properties, graphene exhibits a high
breaking strength and impermeability to molecules as small as helium
in its pristine state [52]. These properties suggest that graphene has a
great potential to create ultrathin high ux membranes with sizetunable pores that can act as molecular sieves.
The NF membrane was able to completely remove nitrate ions; thus,
being coupled with RO would increase the production rate at high quality [12]. The advantages of NF membrane pretreatment, and to the overall system design fall into two broad categories, including overall
treatment cost reduction while maintaining the integrity of water supplies. The benets can be summarized as follows [73,74]:
35
ratios of food to microorganisms (F/M): 0.5 and 0.17 g/g.d. Their results
showed that RO membrane fouling rate was 4 times higher in the MBR
pretreatment that was fed with 0.5 g/g.d. Sludge retention time (SRT)
and hydraulic retention time (HRT) would also affect the performance
of the RO membranes. Grelier et al. [42] and Van den Broecka et al.
[82] concluded that RO membranes were susceptible to fouling at SRT
of 8 days. Ahmed et al. [3] investigated the effect of SRT on membrane
biofouling and microbial community in MBRs. Four sequential anoxic/
anaerobic membrane bioreactors at SRT of 20, 40, 60, 80, and 100 days
were operated. Their results indicated that the bound extra polymeric
substances (bound EPSs) values increased at short SRT (20 d) compared
to long SRT (60100 d); thus, the increased biofouling in MBR subsequently affects the higher RO fouling rates. Furthermore, the ltration
mechanism within an MBR would contribute to the quality of water
produced by the RO membrane systems. The submerged hollow ber
membrane systems (SMBR) using MF or UF membranes inside the bioreactor have demonstrated great potential in producing good quality of
permeate water product [35,89]. A research study conducted by Ye et al.
[89] showed that the SMBR using UF membrane was able to remove 60%
of biopolymers while low removal efciency of low molecular organics
and humics was reported.
Other researchers considered the impact of adsorption and coagulation processes in conjunction with membrane ltration in SMBRs used
as pretreatment to RO membrane systems. Jeong et al. [55] compared
the performance of two SMBRs: 1) adding 1.5 g/L of PAC adsorbents,
and 2) adding 1.5 g/L of PAC adsorbents and 0.51.0 mg/L of FeCl3 as a
coagulation agent (0.5 to 1 mg/l of Fe3+) in the removal of microorganisms and organic foulants while treating raw seawater. Their results
revealed that SMBR with PAC adsorption has removed 76.6% of dissolved organic carbon (DOC), 92.3% of biopolymer, 70% of humics,
89.5% of building blocks, and 88.9% of neutrals, whereas the SMBR
with the addition of PAC and 0.5 mg/L of FeCl3 has removed 83.9% of
DOC, 100% of biopolymer, 89% of humics, 92.5% of building blocks, and
87.8% of neutrals. Biopolymers were the major foulants detected on
the RO membrane surface. Nevertheless, 16.7 and 14.8 g/cm2 were
reported on the RO membrane surface after the pretreatment with
PAC and PAC/FeCl3, respectively when compared to initial 23.5 g/cm2
before pretreatment.
4. Economical aspects of RO with pretreatment technologies
Extensive attempts were made to evaluate the costs of construction
and maintenance of RO desalination plants. These methods ranged from
the use of empirical estimation according to the experience and opinion
of the experts, to sophisticated predictions through process simulations
based on material balances. Moreover, the economics of desalinating
water using RO has been constantly improving, due to the enhancements of the RO membrane technology. In spite of the fact that the
prices of seawater and brackish water membrane elements are slightly
different, the desalting cost of seawater RO is signicantly higher than
the cost of brackish water RO. However, the production of drinking
water from seawater is considered an affordable alternative when
there is no reliable fresh water sources are available. The RO factor
that has the main impact on both investment and operating cost is the
recovery rate of permeate. The RO feed ow is inversely related to the
recovery rate of the design. Consequently, the recovery rate directly impacts the size as well as the cost of all the equipment and power consumption. Yet, in RO systems, the recovery rate cannot exceed certain
limit, due to the fact that higher recovery rates will lead to higher feed
salinity that will result in higher osmotic pressure and consequently increase the permeate salinity [87]. In California, many water agencies
have embarked on exploring seawater desalination because of the
diminishing capacities of fresh surface and ground water. Most of the
water utilities in Southern California currently purchase imported
water from the Bay Delta and Colorado River at a rate of US $2.30 to
$2.45/1,000 gallons ($750 to $800/AF), and the cost of these water
36
Table 1
Comparison of water cost of UF and conventional pretreatment for the 90,000 m3/d RO
desalination plants [41].
Filtration method
Capital cost
Fixed O&M cost
Energy cost
Chemical cost
Total variable operational cost
Total cost
Conventional
UF
$/m3
$/m3
0.22
0.07
0.16
0.05
0.22
0.51
0.23
0.09
0.16
0.03
0.20
0.52
37
Table 2
Comparison of capital cost, produced water cost, energy consumption, and the salinity range of the pretreatment systems.
Pretreatment
Salinity range
(ppm)
Capital cost
Energy consumption
Reference
MF and UF
1500
35,000
[1,41,74]
Conventional
systems
1500
35,000
22.13 (Cent/m3)
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