Design consideration of RO units: case studies

The reverse osmosis process accounts for close to 50% of all desalination processes. The reverse osmosis process is applied to desalination of various types of water that includes brackish and seawater as well as specific types of wastewater. This paper concerns design considerations in the RO process and performance of a number of case studies. The systems considered in this study include the single stage RO unit, the two-stage system, and the twopass configuration. The design calculations are performed as a function of the feed salinity and temperature. The design calculations are made using actual types of RO membranes. The results show increase in the product salinity upon the increase in the feed salinity and temperature. System selection is subject to the desired salinity of the product.

This study focused on evaluation of design considerations for the RO system. The study covers various forms of the RO process and viable [1] H.M. Ettouney, H.T. El-Dessouky and I. Alatiqi, Understand thermal desalination, Chem. Eng. Prog., 95 (1999) 43–54. [2] H.T. El-Dessouky and H.M. Ettouney, Fundamentals of Salt Water Desalination, Elsevier, 2002. [3] T. Matsuura, Progress in membrane science and technology for seawater desalination — a review, Desalination, 134 (2001) 47–54. [4] I. Kawada, Maku (Membrane), 24 (1999) 336. [5] A. Bick and G. Oron, Assessing the linkage between feed water quality and reverse osmosis membrane performance, Desalination, 137 (2001) 141–148. [6] H.T. El-Dessouky and H.M. Ettouney, Flash evaporation, in: Heat Exchanger Design Updates. J. Hewitt, Ed., Begell House, vol. 7, no. 3, 2002. [7] H.T. El-Dessouky, H.M. Ettouney, R.S. Faibish and P. Gowin, Trends and innovations in desalination processes, Desalination, 2003, submitted. [8] H.M. Ettouney, H.T. El-Dessouky, R.S. Faibish and P. Gowin, Economics of thermal and membrane desalination processes, Chem. Eng. Prog., 2002, in print.