Reverse osmosis permeate

The combined hybrid systems met criteria for reuse in the textile industry. Differences in performance are discussed The high-quality of the reverse osmosis permeate meets the demands of the rinsing processes for industrial laundries... 

Reverse osmosis membrane process, 27 637 Reverse osmosis membrane cleaning citric acid application, 6 647 Reverse-osmosis membranes, 75 811, 825 development of, 75 797 Reverse osmosis models, 27 638-639 Reverse osmosis permeators, 76 19 Reverse osmosis seawater desalination process, 26 85 Reverse osmosis systems blending in, 26 80-81 brackish and nanofiltration, 26 80-83 Reverse osmosis technology... 

Figure 12. Effect of Permeate-Side Recirculation on the Reverse-Osmosis Permeate Flux of Triplicate 3N8 Membranes (400 psi, 50-volZ ethanol feed and recirculation concentration, ambient temperature)...

The first separation example is seawater desalination. Traditionally, desahnation was done by distillation or simple evaporation/condensation [55]. Today, thermally driven desalination has been largely replaced by the membrane process reverse osmosis. In reverse osmosis an applied pressure exceeding the osmotic pressure of the salt solution causes water to permeate through a dense membrane. Hydrated salt ions are relatively large compared to water and have a lower permeability through the membrane resulting in relatively salt-free water being collected as the reverse osmosis permeate. 

Singh S, Henderson RK, Baker A, Stuetz RM, Khem SJ (2012) Cheuacterisadon of reverse osmosis permeates from munidpal recycled water systems using fluorescence spectroscopy implications for integrity monitoring. J Membr Sci 421 22 180-189... 

Potential applications of membrane processes in cereal production are in the treatment of stillage, in com wet milling operations, evaporation of steep water, concentration of dilute sweet waters, and in polishing of reverse osmosis permeate and evaporator overheads. Com proteins can be recovered from stillage solubles of dry milled fractions of com, grits, flour, degerminated meal, etc. by reverse osmosis. 

Membranes made by interfacial polymerization have a dense, highly cross-linked interfacial polymer layer formed on the surface of the support membrane at the interface of the two solutions. A less cross-linked, more permeable hydrogel layer forms under this surface layer and fills the pores of the support membrane. Because the dense cross-linked polymer layer can only form at the interface, it is extremely thin, on the order of 0.1 p.m or less, and the permeation flux is high. Because the polymer is highly cross-linked, its selectivity is also high. The first reverse osmosis membranes made this way were 5—10 times less salt-permeable than the best membranes with comparable water fluxes made by other techniques. 

Spira.1- Wound Modules. Spiral-wound modules were used originally for artificial kidneys, but were fuUy developed for reverse osmosis systems. This work, carried out by UOP under sponsorship of the Office of Saline Water (later the Office of Water Research and Technology) resulted in a number of spiral-wound designs (63—65). The design shown in Figure 21 is the simplest and most common, and consists of a membrane envelope wound around a perforated central coUection tube. The wound module is placed inside a tubular pressure vessel, and feed gas is circulated axiaUy down the module across the membrane envelope. A portion of the feed permeates into the membrane envelope, where it spirals toward the center and exits through the coUection tube. 

Pervaporation is a relatively new process with elements in common with reverse osmosis and gas separation. In pervaporation, a liquid mixture contacts one side of a membrane, and the permeate is removed as a vapor from the other. Currendy, the only industrial application of pervaporation is the dehydration of organic solvents, in particular, the dehydration of 90—95% ethanol solutions, a difficult separation problem because an ethanol—water azeotrope forms at 95% ethanol. However, pervaporation processes are also being developed for the removal of dissolved organics from water and the separation of organic solvent mixtures. These applications are likely to become commercial after the year 2000. 

Following ultrafiltration of whey, the permeate passes over a reverse osmosis (qv) membrane to separate the lactose from other components of the permeate. Reverse osmosis can be used to remove water and concentrate soHds in a dairy plant, giving a product with 18% soHds and thus decreasing the difficulty of waste disposal. Concentration of rinse water gives a product with 4—5% total soHds. Proper maintenance of the membrane allows for use up to two years. Membranes are available for use up to 100°C with pH ranges from 1 to 14 the usual temperature range is 0—50°C. 

Reverse Osmosis. A reverse osmosis (RO) process has been developed to remove alcohol from distilled spirits without affecting the sensory properties (14). It consists of passing barrel-strength whiskey through a permeable membrane at high pressure, causing the alcohol to permeate the membrane and concentrating the flavor components in the retentate. 

Membrane Pervaporation Since 1987, membrane pei vapora-tion has become widely accepted in the CPI as an effective means of separation and recovery of liquid-phase process streams. It is most commonly used to dehydrate hquid hydrocarbons to yield a high-purity ethanol, isopropanol, and ethylene glycol product. The method basically consists of a selec tively-permeable membrane layer separating a liquid feed stream and a gas phase permeate stream as shown in Fig. 25-19. The permeation rate and selectivity is governed bv the physicochemical composition of the membrane. Pei vaporation differs From reverse osmosis systems in that the permeate rate is not a function of osmotic pressure, since the permeate is maintained at saturation pressure (Ref. 24). 

The most common membrane systems are driven by pressure. The essence of a pressure-driven membrane process is to selectively permeate one or more species through the membrane. The stream retained at the high pressure side is called the retentate while that transported to the low pressure side is denoted by the permeate (Fig. 11.1). Pressure-driven membrane systems include microfiltration, ultrafiltration, reverse osmosis, pervaporation and gas/vapor permeation. Table ll.l summarizes the main features and applications of these systems. 

A hollow-fiber reverse-osmosis module consists of a shell which houses the hollow fibers (Fig. 11.3). The fibers are grouped together in a bundle with one end sealed and the other open to the atmosphere. The open ends of the fibers are potted into Ml epoxy sealing head plate after which the permeate is collected. The pressurized feed solution (denoted by the shell side fluid) flows radially from a central porous tubular distributor. As the feed solution flows around the outer side of the fibers toward the shell perimeter, the permeate solution penetrates through the fiber wall into the bore side by virtue of reverse osmosis. The permeate is collected at the open ends of the fibers. The reject solution is collected at the porous wall of the shell. 

The task of synthesizing an optimal RON can be stated as follows For a given feed flowrate, Qf. and a feed concentration, Cp. it is desired to synthesize a minimum cost system of reverse osmosis modules, booster pumps and energy-recovery turbines Chat can separate the feed into two streams an environmentally acceptable permeate and a retentate (reject) stream in which the undesired species is concentrated. The permeate stream must meet two requirements ... 

Peivaporation is a relatively new process that has elements in common with reverse osmosis and gas separation. In peivaporation, a liquid mixture contacts one side of a membrane, and the driving force for the process is low vapour pressure on the permeate side of the membrane generated by cooling and condensing the permeate vapour. The attraction of peivaporation is that the separation obtained is proportional to the rate of permeation of the components of the liquid mixture through the selective membrane. Therefore, peivaporation offers the possibility of separating closely boiling mixtures or azeotropes that are difficult to separate by distillation... 

Hyperfiltration (Reverse Osmosis) is a form of membrane distillation or desalination (desalting) operating with membrane pore sizes of perhaps 1 to 10 Angstrom units. The various individual RO component technologies have improved tremendously over the last 20 to 25 years, and resistance to fouling and permeate output rates have benefited. Nevertheless, all RO plants remain susceptible to the risk of fouling, and adequate pretreatment and operation is essential to minimize this problem. 

Reverse osmosis plant are always subject to an insidious and gradual loss of permeate volume output or quality deterioration due to membrane fouling. The rate of decline is strongly influenced by the input RW quality. Therefore, any and all features, such as those above, that can be employed to delay the onset and degree of fouling and extend membrane life are to be recommended. 

An survey of recent developments in membrane processes, involving reverse osmosis (RO), ultrafiltration (UF), microfiltration (MF), electrodialysis (ED), dialysis (D), pervaporation (Pr), gas permeation (GP), and emulsion liquid membrane (ELM), has been provided by Sirkar (1997). 

Membrane Morphology—Pores, Symmetric, Composite Only nucleopore and anodyne membranes have relatively uniform pores. Reverse osmosis, gas permeation, and pervaporation membranes have nonuniform angstrom-sized pores corresponding to spaces in between the rigid or agamic membrane molecules. Solute-membrane molecular interactions are very high. Ultrafiltration membranes have nonuniform nanometer sized pores with some solute-membrane interactions. For other microfiltration membranes with nonuniform pores on the submicrometer to micrometer range, solute-membrane interactions are small. 

Applications RO is primarily used for water purification seawater desalination (35,000 to 50,000 mg/L salt, 5.6 to 10.5 MPa operation), brackish water treatment (5000 to 10,000 mg/L, 1.4 to 4.2 MPa operation), and low-pressure RO (LPRO) (500 mg/L, 0.3 to 1.4 MPa operation). A list of U.S. plants can be found at www2.hawaii.edu, and a 26 Ggal/yr desalination plant is under construction in Ashkelon, Israel. Purified water product is recovered as permeate while the concentrated retentate is discarded as waste. Drinking water specifications of total dissolved solids (TDS) < 500 mg/L are published by the U.S. EPA and of < 1500 mg/L by the WHO [Williams et ak, chap. 24 in Membrane Handbook, Ho and Sirkar (eds.). Van Nostrand, New York, 1992]. Application of RO to drinking water is summarized in Eisenberg and Middlebrooks (Reverse Osmosis Treatment of Drinking Water, Butterworth, Boston, 1986). 

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