The use of alternative, lower quality sources, such as brackish groundwater, saline surface water, and recycled wastewater (i.e., for potable reuse) are rapidly becoming an integral component of long-term portfolio planning, and all nearly all of these alternative supplies require desalination. However, in many areas, particularly inland locations...

I will discuss the different types of evaporators and the applications/restrictions of each type. I will go into heating methods including Mechanical Vapor Compression (MVR), Direct Steam, Thermal Vapor Recompression (TVR), etc. and the efficiencies of each type. I will also compare multiple effect evaporator efficiencies vs. single effect. I wi...

The mass adoption of a newly emerging Closed Circuit Reverse Osmosis (CCRO) technology across multiple industries represents one of the most fundamental breakthroughs in reverse osmosis since its commercialization in the 1960?s. The simple solution combines the benefits of dead-end filtration with the strengths of crossflow filtration. Using stan...

Researchers at UTEP partnered with El Paso Water (EPW) to develop the high-recovery concentrate enhanced-recovery reverse osmosis (CERRO) process. Implementation of full-scale CERRO units at well sites in El Paso have resulted in 70-75% recovery of RO concentrate with a specific energy consumption of 1.23 kWh/m? (4.6 kWh/kgal) and total estimated ...

IDE has developed a High Recovery Reverse Osmosis System that can be employed as a brine minimization tool or as a stand-alone system. This novel system has proven to allow an existing RO systems to reach 97-98% recovery. One of the main advantages of this system is the brine generated, has a low scale potential, therefore so pipe fouling is not...

The Counterflow RO (CFRO) process is a membrane-based method for desalinating brines. It can achieve total dissolved solids (TDS) concentrations of up to 250,000 ppm with pressures of less than 1,000 psi or 70 bar and about half the energy required by mechanical vapor compression (MVC) evaporation. This technology has significance for multiple indu...

To meet water availability and discharge challenges, membrane-based minimal liquid discharge (MLD) is recognized as a cost effective solution for sustainable water management. While MLD provides options for wastewater reuse, it also provides avenues for purifying and recycling salt streams that would otherwise require expensive replacement and/or ...

dprShield is a new technology for potable reuse that combines Porifera?s advanced forward osmosis technology, reverse osmosis, and a patent pending real-time, high-resolution membrane integrity monitoring system designed to increase rejection and increase chances of successful permitting. This paper presents pilot data to increase overall recover...

The U.S. Department of Energy is funded a $100 million dollar early-stage research consortia, known as the Energy-Water Desalination Hub (Hub). The presenter will provide an overview of the Hub's purpose/goals, the selected team to lead this effort, and major the year 1 activities. Attendees can learn how to get involved as affiliates or members ...

Concentrate management is a key issue for the use of reverse osmosis (RO) technology. Reducing the amount of RO concentrate is critical for all inland RO applications. The Flow-Reversal RO technology employs conventional RO equipment with 2 unique functions to improve recovery: Flow-reversal and Block Rotation. This is a continious process that d...

Many inland reverse osmosis (RO) plant consists of evaporation ponds as the only disposal route for the concentrate stream. This climate dependent disposal route is limiting when rainfall seasons are high or when the RO plant requires capacity increase. Increasing the pond area is a typical solution but is becoming difficult due to environmental ...

Some of the biggest challenges with "high-salinity"/sea water desalination; are the high costs of the civil works associated with the desalination plant, the long installation time until water can be produced, the complicated eng. work of the treatment solution and the lack of modularity making many systems not available for small, remote communiti...

Electrodialysis has many attributes that make it complementary to reverse osmosis, and make RO-ED a powerful combination to maximize recovery while maintaining high product water quality. These attributes of ED include resilience to fouling and insensitivity to osmotic pressure. Several hybrid process flow schemes are enumerated, and working exa...

High recovery desalination is challenged by scale formation, energy consumption, and cost. The fundamentals of electrodialysis reversal make it uniquely suited to overcome membrane scaling at high recovery due its ability to pass silica through the system without concentrating and built-in membrane cleaning with polarity reversal for other scalant...

Use of brackish ground water for inland communities is challenging because, unlike sea water which is soft and amenable to desalination, desalination of brackish ground water is limited by mineral scale formation from dissolved metals; silica, sulfate and dissolved CO2. The Mineral Recovery Enhanced Desalination (MRED) process sequentially removes...

In this study, two MD configurations, vacuum membrane distillation (VMD) and direct contact membrane distillation (DCMD), were compared under different operating conditions. It was found that under the same conditions VMD was capable of greater water flux and production compared to DCMD, but VMD was severely limited by operating temperature and pre...

An algal wastewater treatment process was combined with a hybrid forward osmosis (FO) and reverse osmosis (RO) membrane system to treat urban wastewater, harvest algae for recovering energy and nutrients, and produce potable-quality water from primary settled wastewater. The technical viability of the coupled algal-membrane system was demonstrated ...