Design aspects of large sea water reverse osmosis desalination plants

✍ Scribed by C.D. Hornburg; O.J. Morin Jr.

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1983
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 457 KB
• Volume: 45
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0011-9164
• DOI: 10.1016/0011-9164(83)87033-7

✦ Synopsis

As the size of SWRO plants grow, more attention must be paid to the overall design aspects of the total plant. Some of these are simplifying and improving the pretreatment; reducing the pretreatment chemicals; systems optimization to match sea water conditions and; component size selections.

The optimum conversion ratio is generally the maximum possible as limited by brine osmotic pressure and brine flow considerations. This is fran 30% to 4D% depending on feed temperature and pressure. An econanic analysis of cooling of the feedwater is made. This was found to be beneficial for sea water temperatures over 27'C.

To utilize larger single streams or "blocks" of permeators, larger high pressure pumps should be employed. These may be driven directly by meditnn speed diesel engines. A block size of 5 MIGD using a single H.P. pump of 2517 m3/h (11,080 U.S. GPM) at 701m is envisioned.