Electrocoagulation as a pretreatment for reverse osmosis for potable water from brackish groundwater

Abstract

Reverse osmosis (RO) is a widely utilized method for water treatment and desalination. Our study examined the application of an electrocoagulation (EC) and RO hybrid system for treating actual brackish groundwater (BGW), focusing on reducing RO scaling by EC pretreatment. A series of EC operating conditions were investigated, such as applied voltage, pH, EC reaction time, and type of electrode. The commercial software WAVE was utilized to analyze the water quality to assess the scaling potential of the EC pretreated feed stream for the San Antonio Water System (SAWS) BGW desalination plant. The SAWS BGW desalination process involves a three-stage RO process. Our findings indicate that pretreatment with EC effectively prevents membrane scaling when compared to feed without EC. We conducted continuous EC experiments which showed stable performance and the potential for future commercialization.

Keywords

• Desalination
• Brackish groundwater
• Reverse osmosis
• Pretreatment
• Electrocoagulation