A Short Review on Process and Applications of Reverse Osmosis (original) (raw)

A Prototype Design and Experimentation of Reverse Osmosis (RO) Based Wastewater Treatment

In the past few years, the commercialization of small scale reverse osmosis (RO) plant for low total dissolved solids (TDS) brackish and contaminated groundwater water desalination offered an alternative solution to obtain drinking water with TDS lower than 500 mg/L. Due to rapid development in membrane technology the technical and economical usefulness of RO process has been improved. In the current research work, a prototype Reverse Osmosis (RO) wastewater treatmentplant has been developed and its performance was evaluated to produce the safe and drinkable water at local small community.Salt rejection and permeatewater flowrate are the key performance parameters. These performance parameters are influenced by other variable parameters such as applied feed pressure, temperature, recovery and feed water salinity.The RO plant performance has been evaluated through testing different water quality parameters; including physical, chemical and biological analysis of the treated sample. The plant was operated by varying feed water pressures and feed water salinity which indicated that the product water has the highest quality and maximum permeateflow rate at 25 bar of applied feed water pressure for feed water salinity upto 4000 mg/L. The water quality results indicate that permeate obtained after treatment has excellent quality free physical and microbial contaminants.

Review on Technology-Based on Reverse Osmosis

Anbar Journal of Engineering Sciences

Reverse osmosis (RO) is a membrane filtering system that uses a semipermeable membrane to remove contaminants from water before sending the purified water to be used in several settings, such as households and factories. The goal of this study is to investigate the process of reverse osmosis and the status of the membrane materials used in the process as advantages and disadvantages of Reverse osmosis. These membrane materials are the driving elements in the process. This review also discusses cleaning membranes, using RO systems for several applications, and new advancements in reverse osmosis. Traditional RO membranes for seawater desalination. This technique is regularly utilized to desalinate seawater for drinking, agricultural, and industrial applications. Reverse osmosis (RO) is a powerful method of purifying water that employs a semi-permeable membrane to filter out harmful bacteria and dissolved solids.

The performance of reverse osmosis membrane In water treatment

Membrane technology has led to a new focus on water and wastewater treatment. This is due to several drawback of the conventional water treatment i.e release the toxic and carcinogenic materials. In this research, the use Reverse Osmosis (RO) membrane for treating river and well water to obtain clean and drinking water was studied. The variables studied were effect of pressure and operation time to the membrane flux. The pressure was varied from 1 to 7 bar and the operation time was varied from 15 to 60 minutes. The content of Total Dissolved Solid (TDS) in the permeate product was analyzed. The results shown that the increase of pressure would increase the membrane flux and decrease TDS. The increase of the operation time would decrease membrane flux and TDS. The reverse osmosis membrane was successfully applied to treat the river and well water. The product fulfill national standard quality of drinking water by viewpoint of the TDS content.

Reverse Osmosis in Industrial Wastewater Treatment Units

Reverse Osmosis in Industrial Wastewater Treatment Units, 2023

The MENA region faces a severe water crisis, prompting governments to take action by improving irrigation methods, treating and reusing sewage and agricultural wastewater, and issuing restrictions regulating industrial wastewater discharge. As a result, many large factories have established industrial wastewater treatment plants to recycle water, reduce reliance on external sources, comply with environmental regulations, and implement MLD or ZLD principles. This chapter will focus on industrial wastewater treatment using reverse osmosis (RO) membranes. It will cover the treatment of various contaminants such as nitrogen, phosphorus, COD, BOD, TOC, and heavy metals. It will discuss different treatment methods and technologies to produce reusable water while achieving MLD and ZLD principles.

Sustainable Processes for Treatment of Waste Water Reverse Osmosis Concentrate to Achieve Zero Waste Discharge: A Detailed Study in Water Reclamation Plant

Procedia Environmental Sciences, 2016

Water reclamation systems based on dense membrane treatment such as reverse osmosis (RO) are being progressively applied to meet water quantity and quality requirements for a range of urban and environmental applications. The RO concentrate usually represents 25% of the feed water flow and contains the organic and inorganic contaminants at higher concentrations. The amount of RO concentrate waste water requiring disposal must be as minimal as possible (near zero-discharge); the recovery of high quality water should be as high as possible. Management issues related to proper treatment and disposal of RO concentrate are an important aspect of sustainable water reclamation practice. The RO concentrate is a significant component of water treatment process and poorly managed treatment and disposal of RO concentrate causes significant consequences. Even in a small to medium size water reclamation plant in Sydney, 2000 kL of water is treated by RO and around 300 kL of RO concentrate is produced daily. This RO concentrate consists of a high level of organics (25-30 mg/L of DOC which is mainly refractory organics) and inorganic salts (Cl-= 400-650 mg/L, Na + = 400-500 mg/L, Ca 2+ = 93-200 mg/L, K + = 63-100 mg/L). The RO concentrate waste disposal cost can be minimized and made valuable by reclaiming the RO concentrate with the aim of producing salts from the solutes and recycling the water to the treatment system. Technologies for recovery of high salt concentration from the RO concentrate such as forward osmosis (FO) and membrane distillation (MD) are either energy intensive or not developed in large scale. In this study, we highlight a sustainable membrane adsorption hybrid system in treating this RO concentrate.

Reuse of reverse osmosis membranes in advanced wastewater treatment

Desalination, 2002

In areas where tap water has a high salt content, wastewater is not appropriate for reuse in agriculture, particularly for sensitive crops. One alternative is reduction, via desalination, of the brackish character to the secondary effluent. A filtration stage is also required before desalination. On the other hand, used reverse osmosis membranes can be recycled and used as filters in the advanced treatment stage in order to reduce suspended matter contained in the secondary effluent -one advantage being the environmental recovery of solid waste. Used membranes can be treated with strong chemical oxidants to peel off the active separation layer in order to transform them into microfiltration or ultrafiltration elements. Preliminaxy tests have been carried out with 8" elements, aimed at comparing membrane performance before and after the peeling process. An index denoted as peeling effectiveness (high flux, high salt passage) is used for comparison. It was soon observed that potassium permanganate was more effective than others, together with sodium hydroxide. Doses around 1000 mg/L KMnO, provided the best results. It was also concluded that membrane cleaning, done with sodium bisulphite prior to peeling, was better when recirculating the cleaning solution around the membrane rather than soaking it. Next steps in the research will test the actual filtration capability of the peeled membranes in actual wastewater.

Reverse osmosis membranes for treatment of produced water: a process analysis

Desalination and Water Treatment, 2015

The purpose of this paper was to develop and present a process suitable for the purification of the so-called produced waters, a by-product of crude oil extraction, by devising a treatment train aimed at industrial and agricultural water reuse. If compared to municipal wastewaters, produced waters have a very high salinity that requires specific attention for designing and managing the specific treatment device. Membranes, commonly used in the production of desalted water, appear to be a suitable technique to deal with these issues. In this paper, we propose a comprehensive process scheme for produced water treatment train: A Vibratory Shear Enhanced Processing (VSEP) membrane system is in charge of the secondary treatment, whereas a reverse osmosis (RO) unit realizes the tertiary treatment. Material and energy balances are carried out on the whole process, while the RO process is simulated by the IMSDesign Software by Hydranautics. We analyzed three different scenarios, at increasing produced waters salinity, getting a stream outlet as purified water with such low pollutants concentration and salinity to be reusable for different purposes. The RO process is carried out with a single-step or a double-step filtration; a cost analysis, performed on the different case studies, allowed computing the final specific costs per cubic meter of treated water, showing that a double filtration step allows a lower salinity water, albeit raising the costs up to about 5 €/m 3 , a high price justified only if a ultrapure water should be required for specific applications.

Treatment and Analysis of Reverse Osmosis Rejected Water from Industrial Processes

Journal of Chemical Health Risks, 2023

This research study delves into the treatment and analysis of reverse osmosis (RO)-rejected water generated from industrial processes. As industries increasingly rely on RO technology for water purification, the management and proper disposal of the rejected water have become critical concerns. This study aims to investigate effective treatment methods for RO-rejected water, emphasizing sustainable and environmentally friendly approaches. The investigation encompasses in-depth analyses of the rejected water, aiming to discern its chemical composition both before and post-treatment. Various treatment methodologies, including simple distillation, fractional distillation, and coagulation using both coagulant alone (Al2SO4) and coagulant-flocculant (Al2SO4-polymer) combinations, were employed. The findings indicate that simple distillation proves most effective in reducing pH, turbidity, total suspended solids (TSS), alkalinity, and chlorides in reverse osmosis-rejected water. Conversely, fractional distillation demonstrates superior efficacy in treating conductivity, total dissolved solids (TDS), biochemical oxygen demand (BOD), and hardness. This nuanced approach to treatment underscores the importance of tailored strategies to address specific contaminants within the rejected water.

Critical design considerations for harnessing reverse osmosis processes in water/wastewater treatment

Water Science & Technology: Water Supply, 2006

In this paper, the performance of the full-scale RO process with highly permeable membranes and the governing mechanisms were carefully studied. It was found that the performance of a full-scale RO process could be controlled by two possible mechanisms, namely mass transfer rate and thermodynamic limitations. Under relatively low driving pressure, it was controlled by mass transfer rate (water flux) of the membrane. However, with the highly permeable membrane, it is possible that the performance is limited by the thermodynamic limitation, in which the osmotic pressure becomes equal to the driving pressure inside of the membrane channel. A process controlled by thermodynamic limitation is an extremely case of the hydraulic imbalance problem. When it occurs, it means part of the membranes in the processes do not contribute to permeate production. More complicated are situations in the intermediate pressure range, in which both mechanisms contribute to, but none of them can dominate, the performance of the process.