Membrane Development for Seawater Desalination

✍ Scribed by E. Drioli

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1987
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 554 KB
• Volume: 63
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0011-9164
• DOI: 10.1016/0011-9164(87)90040-3

✦ Synopsis

Reverse osmosis is today an attractive and competitive basic unit operation

for seawater desalination on small and large scale. Various membrane5 and modulus are already available with interesting performance5 and affidability.

New polymeric asymmetric and composite membranes with high or moderate salts rejection5 are under testing in various countries and will become commercially available. Their higher chemical and thermal resistence might simplify operating procedure, increase reverse osmosis flexibility, decrease capital and running costs. The possibility to integrate with reverse osmosis other membrane separations in seawater desalination is also of interest. Cross flow microfiltration or ultrafiltration,partitularly in the pretreatment phase, and membrane distillation are two processes which can contribute, combined with reverse osmosis, to the optimization of seawater desalination.