Optimization of Membrane Desalination Process Along With Products Recovery

Development of desalination technologies in recent years, especially in the case of reverse osmosis process, enables now the massive production of drinking water with amoderate cost, providing flexible solutions to different necessities within the fields of population supply, industry and agriculture. The development of reverse osmosis (RO) technology has been a consequence of several factors such as reduction in energy consumption and decrease in membrane cost. The best option is to concentrate the brine by reverse osmosis up to the technical limit of the process. In this paper the concentrate obtained from RO is further treated in evaporator in which additional freshwater is obtained. The thick liquor from the evaporator is further processed into crystallizer where salt is obtained and themother liquor is recycled back to crystallizer. In this way by concentrating the reject from RO freshwater is recovered and by using crystallizer valuable product such as salt is obtained. Fromthe experimentation/analysis the results obtained are positive as discussed in the paper. The possibility of producing water frombrackish groundwater using reverse osmosis processes is studied. Brackish groundwater samples were taken and characterized in terms of pH, conductivity and hardness. The objective of this paper is to concentrate the reject from RO (brine) by means of evaporator to obtain additional freshwater. The product is processed in crystallizer to obtain crystals.