Population growth and prolonged and frequent drought events call for an urgent need for alternative sources of water. The use of unconventional water resources such as brackish water and reclaimed water has become a viable option because of the recent advances in reverse osmosis (RO) technologies. As of March 2021, there are more than 1,200 full-scale RO facilities in the United States. A vast majority (>95%) of those RO facilities utilizes the low-pressure brackish water RO process. However, the challenges of the RO process are high capital and operation and maintenance costs along with the availability of brine disposal methods, especially for inland communities. Although the facilities might utilize an additional stage of RO for a greater permeate recovery (up to 90%), scaling associated with silica, calcium, phosphate, and other inorganic constituents present in the RO concentrate could be problematic as the precent recovery increases. Several physical/chemical/mechanical high recovery RO processes that allow additional permeate recovery have been developed and tested in pilot-scale facilities (Liu et al. 2019; Gu et al. 2021). However, those high-recovery RO technologies require extensive chemical additions, complex mechanical systems, and/or higher energy consumption. The implementation of such technologies would result in much higher capital and operational costs than the conventional RO process per water production.
This presentation is available to AMTA Members only.
Speaker
- Keisuke Ikehata
Company
- Texas State University
Event
- AMTA/AWWA Membrane Technology Conference, Las Vegas
Session
- AMTA/AWWA Membrane Technology Conference
Date
- 02/22/22
Media
Keywords
- Photobioreactor, Reverse Osmosis, Brackish Water
Reference
- 9715-DP2907