Several emerging technologies show potential to enhance recovery rates during desalination of brackish water. These processes include emerging approaches for concentrate treatment and new desalination technologies. Emerging concentrate treatment technologies that aim to enhance recovery and thus minimize concentrate include physical-chemical or biological treatment of concentrate followed by further reverse-osmosis (RO) treatment; new RO methods based on softening pretreatment and pH control to result in a high-efficiency system; a new RO separator that uses vibration shear force; and seeded slurry processes combined with RO to remove scaling compounds in a controlled fashion. Some of these emerging technologies could be applied at full-scale as the primary desalting step in non-municipal applications. For municipal applications, however, these technologies would likely be most cost-competitive when used to treat the concentrate from a conventional RO system, which is being used as the primary desalting step. These emerging technologies have the potential to enhance recovery rates by about 10% or more, thus resulting in significant concentrate minimization. Additional research, both at the fundamental and applied levels, will be important and beneficial to develop, optimize, and implement practical solutions to minimize concentrate. The full article first appeared in the November/December 2008 issue of D&WR magazine
Several emerging technologies show potential to enhance recovery rates during desalination of brackish water. These processes include emerging approaches for concentrate treatment and new desalination technologies.
Emerging concentrate treatment technologies that aim to enhance recovery and thus minimize concentrate include physical-chemical or biological treatment of concentrate followed by further reverse-osmosis (RO) treatment; new RO methods based on softening pretreatment and pH control to result in a high-efficiency system; a new RO separator that uses vibration shear force; and seeded slurry processes combined with RO to remove scaling compounds in a controlled fashion.
Some of these emerging technologies could be applied at full-scale as the primary desalting step in non-municipal applications. For municipal applications, however, these technologies would likely be most cost-competitive when used to treat the concentrate from a conventional RO system, which is being used as the primary desalting step.
These emerging technologies have the potential to enhance recovery rates by about 10% or more, thus resulting in significant concentrate minimization. Additional research, both at the fundamental and applied levels, will be important and beneficial to develop, optimize, and implement practical solutions to minimize concentrate.
The full article first appeared in the November/December 2008 issue of D&WR magazine