Performance of reverse osmosis based desalination process using spiral wound membrane: Sensitivity study of operating parameters under variable seawater conditions

Abstract

Reverse Osmosis (RO) process accounts for 80% of the world desalination capacity. Apparently, there is a rapid increase of deploying the RO process in seawater desalination due to its high efficiency in removing salts at a reduced energy consumption compared to thermal desalination technologies such as MSF and MED. Among different types of membranes, spiral would membranes is one of the most used. However, there is no in-depth study on the performance of spiral wound membranes in terms of salt rejection, water quality, water recovery and specific energy consumption subject to wide range of seawater salinity, temperature, feed flowrate and pressure using a high fidelity but a realistic process model which is therefore is the focus of this study. The membrane is subjected to conditions within the manufacturer's recommendations. The outcome of this research will certainly help the designers selecting optimum RO network configuration for a large-scale desalination process.

Keywords

• Reverse osmosis desalination
• Spiral wound membrane
• Modelling
• Variable seawater conditions
• Sensitivity analysis