Operating RO Plants in Remote Locations

Osmoflo remotely operates more than 120 plants that are located across Australia, Hong Kong, New Caledonia and Chile. More than 50% of these are located in remote locations, having significant distances from a major city and remotely operating the RO plants is a challenge. To overcome the challenges innovation has been applied in man, machine, method, material and measurement areas. Three case studies for remotely operated RO plants are presented. The first is a plant at Gingko mineral sands mine 1160km from Sydney. This is a build, own and operated plant and treats challenging hypersaline groundwater to produce 2.1ML/d of permeate for process and potable water. It consists of simple multimedia filters and SWRO. The second plant is at Mineral El Tosoro in the Atacama desert, Chile. This plant treats groundwater (stored in ponds) with iron, colloidal suspended solids and high silica. The plant originally had coagulation with multimedia filters as pretreatment but was upgraded to UF pretreatment when Osmoflo took over operations in 2013. It has two pass RO to supply potable water (through first pass RO permeate) and low chloride process water. The third plant is at Moomba, 770km from Adelaide. This plant has been in operations for >10yrs and treats groundwater with some hydrocarbons and high temperature. It consists of cooling towers, multimedia filters, first pass RO with carbon filters for potable water and second pass RO for demineralised water. The client has forecasted higher potable water demand and Osmoflo has proposed the Brine Squeezer process to recover more water from the first pass RO concentrate. The Brine Squeezer operates very differently from conventional RO to achieve ultra-high, overall recoveries and can easily be operated remotely. These case studies demonstrate that remote RO operation yields high availability and deliver lower operating and maintenance costs for many remote sites. This is possible with considerations in product lifecycle areas.

This presentation is available to AMTA Members only.