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 constraints and high costs, so reduction of the pond volume is typically the preferred method. However, desalinating the pond water or RO concentrate to the highest recovery has technical challenges associated with severe fouling and scaling of membranes or incur high costs from using thermal evaporation technologies. Osmoflo has developed the Brine Squeezer (OBS) process which is based on RO membrane separation and is achieved by innovative plant design, carefully managing the sustainable flux of the site specific water source to manipulate the rates of fouling and scaling. This process alsohiep. differs from Ultra-High Pressure RO (UHPRO) due to the operation of the system precisely in the scaling zone that would have significant impacts on the performance of regular UHPRO systems. The OBS process has been demonstrated at a brewery for over two years, a new larger scale start-up at a uranium mine and a new pilot scale at a nickel refinery.
This presentation is available to AMTA Members only.
Speaker
- Hiep Le
Company
- Osmoflo
Event
- AMTA/SWMOA Technology Transfer Workshop, Albuquerque, NM
Session
- AMTA/SWMOA Technology Transfer Workshop
Date
- 10/30/19
Media
Keywords
- Reverse Osmosis, Ultra High Pressure RO, Evaporation ponds
Reference
- 9699-DP2384