Reverse osmosis treatment using

Reverse osmosis is used for desalination of seawater, treatment of recycle water in chemical plants and separation of industrial wastes. More recently the technique has been applied to concentration and dehydrogenation of food products such as milk and fruit juices. See ultrafiltralion. 

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). 

Ridgway H.F., Kelly A., Justice C., and Olson B.H., Microbial fouling of reverse osmosis membranes used in advanced wastewater treatment technology Chemical bacteriological and ultrastiuctural analyses. Applied and Environmental Microbiology 46 1983 1066-1084. 

Reverse osmosis is used as a method of desalting seawater, recovering wastewater from paper mill operations, pollution control, industrial water treatment, chemical separations, and food processing. This method involves application of pressure to the surface of a saline solution, thus forcing pure water to pass from the solution through a membrane that is too dense to permit passage of sodium and chlorine ions. Hollow fibers of cellulose acetate or nylon are used as membranes, since their large surface area offers more efficient separation. See dialysis membrane diffusion desalination. 

A membrane designated "Solrox" made by Sumitomo Chemical Company is closely related to the above plasma polymerized composite membranes. A 1980 report by T. Sano described the Sumitomo process (31). A support film was cast from a polyacrylonitrile copolymer containing at least 40 mole percent acrylonitrile. The support film was dried and exposed to a helium or hydrogen plasma to form a tight cross-linked surface skin on the porous polyacrylonitrile support film. Data in a U.S. Patent issued in 1979 to Sano et al showed that the unmodified support film had a water flux of 87 gfd (145 L/ sq m/hr) at 142 psi (10 kg/sq cm). After the plasma treatment a reverse osmosis test using 0.55 percent NaCl at 710 psi (4895 kPa) showed 10.5 gfd (17.5 L/sq m/hr) flux at 98.3 percent salt rejection (32). This membrane appears to fall between a conventional asymmetric membrane and a composite membrane. If the surface skin is only cross-linked, one might call it a modified asymmetric membrane. However, if the surface skin is substantially modified chemically to make it distinct from the bulk of the membrane it could be considered as a composite type. 

Reverse osmosis separations of 12 alkali meteil halides in methanol solutions have been studied using cellulose acetate membranes of different surface porosities. Data for surface excess free energy parameters for the ions and ion pairs Involved have been generated for the above mend>rane material-solution systems. These data offer a means of predicting the performance of cellulose acetate membranes in the reverse osmosis treatment of methanol solutions involving the above ions from only a single set of experimental data. 

Reverse osmosis is used in treatment of drinking and utility water. This method is used to pretreat gravitational water from dumps and other problematic waste water. Membranes made of PEI (Table 5) have proven themselves in these application due to their chemical resistance and dimensional stabihty. 

Hachisuka H and Ikeda K, Composite reverse osmosis membrane having a separation layer with polyvinyl alcohol coating and method of reverse osmosis treatment of water using the same, US Patent 6 177 Oil, Nitto Denko Corporation, Osaka, Japan, January 23, 2001. 

Reverse osmosis is used full scale for the treatment of landfill leachates (Linde et al., 1995). The RO retentate can be recycled to the landfill either directly or after evaporation. If this is not allowed, as is the case in Germany, more expensive solutions are to be found for the concentrate (Melin et al., 2005). A possible treatment method is activated carbon adsorption/oxidation, patented as Biomembrat-Plus, or even the combination of high-pressure RO, a crystallizer, and NF (Melin et al., 2005). 

Ullrafiltration processes have proved successful for the treatment of effluents, the treatment of black liquor, bleaching effluents and paper machine wash waters. They have also found use in the treatment of Kraft process effluents and there is increasing use of ultrafiltration to recover lignosulphonate and alkali lignin from the spent Uquors to produce other products. Reverse osmosis is used in the pulp and paper industry for concentration of sulphate liquor, using plate and frame modules and cellulose acetate membranes. Reverse osmosis is also used in the treatment of bleach effluents after various pretreatment stages. 

Reverse osmosis is a high-pressure membrane separation process (20 to 100 bar) which can be used to reject dissolved inorganic salt or heavy metals. The concentrated waste material produced by membrane process should be recycled if possible but might require further treatment or disposal. 

Makeup. Makeup treatment depends extensively on the source water. Some steam systems use municipal water as a source. These systems may require dechlorination followed by reverse osmosis (qv) and ion exchange. Other systems use weUwater. In hard water areas, these systems include softening before further purification. Surface waters may require removal of suspended soHds by sedimentation (qv), coagulation, flocculation, and filtration. Calcium may be reduced by precipitation softening or lime softening. Organic contaminants can be removed by absorption on activated carbon. Details of makeup water treatment may be found in many handbooks (22—24) as well as in technical Hterature from water treatment chemical suppHers. 

The individual membrane filtration processes are defined chiefly by pore size although there is some overlap. The smallest membrane pore size is used in reverse osmosis (0.0005—0.002 microns), followed by nanofiltration (0.001—0.01 microns), ultrafHtration (0.002—0.1 microns), and microfiltration (0.1—1.0 microns). Electro dialysis uses electric current to transport ionic species across a membrane. Micro- and ultrafHtration rely on pore size for material separation, reverse osmosis on pore size and diffusion, and electro dialysis on diffusion. Separation efficiency does not reach 100% for any of these membrane processes. For example, when used to desalinate—soften water for industrial processes, the concentrated salt stream (reject) from reverse osmosis can be 20% of the total flow. These concentrated, yet stiH dilute streams, may require additional treatment or special disposal methods. 

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