Effectiveness of Ceramic Ultrafiltration for SWRO Pre-Treatment

Desalination is becoming vital for securing a strategic and sustainable source of water around the world, and membrane-based seawater reverse osmosis (SWRO) desalination is a popular desalination technology. An effective pre-treatment process for SWRO impacts the performance and costs of the overall plant. Pre-treatment processes for SWRO are either conventional technologies or make use of membrane filtration. Conventional forms of pre-treatment are space intensive, and are prone to operational upsets, while polymeric membrane plants can suffer from fouling and meeting capacity during feed water quality events often resulting in permeability decline, increased operating costs, and shorter guaranteed useful life. The robustness of ceramic membranes for pre-treatment of SWRO has advantages impacting capital and operational costs such as limited upstream pre-treatment needs, higher operating fluxes, and longer membrane life. This results in a more compact and operationally reliable plant with high recoveries. Nanostone Water Inc has been testing Ceramic Ultrafiltration membrane filtration for SWRO pretreatment with several customers. The results and learnings from these studies will be presented.

This presentation is available to AMTA Members only.