EXPANDING ISSUES IN DESALINATION Edited by Robert Y. Ning Expanding Issues in Desalination Edited by Robert Y. Ning Published by InTech Janeza Trdine 9, 51000 Rijeka, Croatia Copyright © 2011 InTech All chapters are Open Access articles distributed under the Creative Commons Non Commercial Share Alike Attribution 3.0 license, which permits to copy, distribute, transmit, and adapt the work in any medium, so long as the original work is properly cited. After this work has been published by InTech, authors have the right to republish it, in whole or part, in any publication of which they are the author, and to make other personal use of the work. Any republication, referencing or personal use of the work must explicitly identify the original source. Statements and opinions expressed in the chapters are these of the individual contributors and not necessarily those of the editors or publisher. No responsibility is accepted for the accuracy of information contained in the published articles. The publisher assumes no responsibility for any damage or injury to persons or property arising out of the use of any materials, instructions, methods or ideas contained in the book. Publishing Process Manager Sandra Bakic Technical Editor Teodora Smiljanic Cover Designer Jan Hyrat Image Copyright Jorg Hackemann, 2010. Used under license from Shutterstock.com First published September, 2011 Printed in Croatia A free online edition of this book is available at www.intechopen.com Additional hard copies can be obtained from orders@intechweb.org Expanding Issues in Desalination, Edited by Robert Y. Ning p. cm. ISBN 978-953-307-624-9 free online editions of InTech Books and Journals can be found at www.intechopen.com Contents Preface IX Part 1 Reverse Osmosis 1 Chapter 1 A Large Review of the Pre Treatment 3 Kader Gaid Chapter 2 Pretreatment for Reverse Osmosis Systems 57 Robert Y. Ning Chapter 3 Membrane Cleaning 63 José Miguel Arnal, Beatriz García-Fayos and María Sancho Chapter 4 Reject Brines from Desalination as Possible Sources for Environmental Technologies 85 Caterina De Vito, Silvano Mignardi, Vincenzo Ferrini and Robert F. Martin Chapter 5 Rotary Pressure Exchanger for SWRO 103 Zhou Yihui, Bi Mingshu and Liu Yu Part 2 Distillation 121 Chapter 6 Flexibility Study for a MSF by Monte Carlo Simulation 123 Enrique Tarifa, Samuel Franco Domínguez, Carlos Vera and Sergio Mussati Chapter 7 A Computational Model Study of Brine Discharges from Seawater Desalination Plants at Barka, Oman 139 H.H. Al-Barwani and Anton Purnama Chapter 8 Brine Outfalls: State of the Art 155 Daniela Malcangio and Antonio F. Petrillo VI Contents Part 3 Nano, Ultra and Microfiltrations 179 Chapter 9 The Influence of Electrochemical Properties of Membranes and Dispersions on Microfiltration 181 Petr Mikulášek and Pavlína Velikovská Chapter 10 Nanofiltration and Low Energy Reverse Osmosis for Advanced Wastewaters Treatment 197 Gamal Khedr Chapter 11 Assessment of UV Pre-Treatment to Reduce Fouling of NF Membranes 219 Di Martino Patrick, Houari Ahmed, Heim Véronique and Marconnet Cyril Chapter 12 PAC/UF for Removing Cyanobacterial Cells and Toxins from Drinking Water 233 Margarida Campinas and Maria João Rosa Chapter 13 Fabrication of Tubular Membrane Supports from Low Price Raw Materials, Using Both Centrifugal Casting and/or Extrusion Methods 253 Abdelhamid Harabi and Ferhat Bouzerara Part 4 Special Applications 275 Chapter 14 Determination of Optimal Conditions for Separation of Metal Ions Through Membrane Dialysis/Electrodialysis Using Statistical Experimental Methods 277 Jau-Kai Wang, Jir-Ming Char and Ting-Chia Huang Chapter 15 Developing Nano-Structured Carbon Electrodes for Capacitive Brackish Water Desalination 301 Linda Zou Chapter 16 Copper Ions Biosorption Properties of Biomass Derived from Algerian Sahara Plants 319 Abdelkrim Cheriti, Mohamed Fouzi Talhi, Nasser Belboukhari and Safia Taleb Chapter 17 Chelating Agents of a New Generation as an Alternative to Conventional Chelators for Heavy Metal Ions Removal from Different Waste Waters 339 Dorota Kołodyńska Chapter 18 Operating Experience of Desalination Unit Coupled to Primary Coolant System of Cirus 371 R.C. Sharma and Rakesh Ranjan Contents VII Chapter 19 Nanofiltration Used for Desalination and Concentration in the Manufacture of Liquid Dyes Production 379 Petr Mikulášek and Jiří Cuhorka Chapter 20 New Type Filtration, Ion-Exchange, Sorption Small Multi Process Water Conditioning Device Used as a Multi Cell Water Deionizer 395 Angel Zvezdov and Dilyana Zvezdova Preface For this book, the term desalination is used in the broadest sense of the removal of dissolved, suspended, visible and invisible impurities in seawater, brackish water and wastewater, to make them drinkable, or pure enough for industrial applications like in the processes for the production of steam, power, pharmaceuticals and microelectronics, or simply for discharge back into the environment. From space, the earth is a blue planet, covered three quarters of surface by oceans and one quarter by land. Seawater contains 35 to 40 grams per liter of dissolved salts, too salty to drink or use. At any moment in time, about 0.04% of the water is in the process of being recycled through the atmosphere by the heat from the sun. Distilled water from clouds, condense as rain or snow, is falling mostly in the ocean. Only 2.5% of the Earth’s total water is fresh water, but two-thirds of this water is locked away from man’s use in ice caps and glaciers. The estimated one third (0.8%) of fresh water sink into the deep aquifers, or flows into lakes and rivers then to the sea. Water, being a most powerful solvent, leaches soluble salts and erodes rocks from the ground, and becomes increasingly saline and turbid before reaching the sea, or equilibrates as brackish water in the lakes and aquifers. Being the essential medium for microbial and aquatic life, it is filled with living and non-living biotic organic matter. Much of the complex suspended organic and inorganic matter in water are colloidal particles, smaller than 1 micron (1 nanometer) in size, hence invisible to naked eyes. Human needs drive the technology of desalination of water. The need is exacerbated by the mismatch of population densities with the natural distribution of available water on land. Like other basic technologies, the mountain of published information on this subject can hardly be captured in one book. Major desalination processes involve thermal evaporation known as Multi-Stage Flash Distillation (MSF), Multiple- Effect Distillation (MED) and Vapor Compression Distillation (VC). Since 1970s, technologies using semi-permeable membranes grew rapidly to compete with distillation to minimize energy consumption. Reverse Osmosis (RO) now is becoming favored over MSF even in oil-rich countries of the Persian/Arabian Gulf. Ion-exchange resins are used to soften or deionize water. Electrodialysis (ED) commercially introduced in the early 1960s also uses semi-permeable membranes. It finds greater application in industrial rather than municipal applications. Minor desalination processes include freezing, membrane distillation and solar humidification. X Preface For students and workers in the field of desalination, this book provides a summary of key concepts and keywords with which detailed information may be gathered through internet search engines. Papers and reviews collected in this volume covers the spectrum of topics in desalination of water, too broad to delve into in depth. The literature citations in these papers serve to fill in gaps in the coverage of this book. Contributions to the knowledge-base of desalination is expected to continue to grow exponentially in the coming years. Robert Y. Ning, Ph.D. Vice President, Science King Lee Technologies USA [...]... operating a reverse osmosis (RO) desalination plant is the ability of the pre treatment system to consistently produce well-filtered and relatively particle- and microbe-free water for feed to the RO system Pre treatment is critical in RO applications because it directly impacts fouling of the RO membranes Fouling of the RO 24 Expanding Issues in Desalination membranes results in increased operating... alkaline earth metals (such as Ca2+ and Mg2+ ) in seawater is one of the most important processes resulting in dissociation of organic-Fe3+ complexes and subsequent Fe3+ hydrolytic precipitation The high concentration of alkaline earth cations in seawater probably caused the dissolution of organic Fe3+ complexes through the metal exchange reaction In estuarine and coastal 12 Expanding Issues in Desalination. .. Mediterranean Sea – Open Intake 20 Expanding Issues in Desalination This is commonly referred to as an algal bloom Strictly speaking the most accurate term is “phytoplankton bloom” Algal blooms can pose problems to the operation of a desalination plant Extremely high algal numbers result in a high suspended solids load and organics Most marine algal blooms are harmless, resulting only in a discolouration... amount of fine particulate matter in the water Turbidity is measured in Nephelometric Turbidity Units (NTU) 2.1.5 Fouling index Fouling is the major issue when using membranes for water treatment Several parameters have been proposed for measuring a fouling potential and using it as a predictive tool for assessing the adequacy of pre-treatment The Silt Density Index (SDI) and the Modified Fouling Index... Treatment 2.1.5.2 Modified Fouling Index Schippers & Verdouw have proposed a fouling index called “Modified Fouling Index” (MFI) which takes into account fouling mechanisms (Schippers & Verdouw, 1980) They considered that the fouling of a flat-sheet membrane in dead-end filtration at constant transmembrane pressure takes place in three steps: (1) pore blocking, (2) formation of an incompressible cake and... Colloidal fouling is due to the presence of suspended solids in water, such as mud and silt, and tends to cause gross plugging of the device rather than fouling of the membrane surface Biological fouling: Build-up of a microbial community on the membrane surface including microbes and their by-products, resulting in a slime layer Bio-fouling is a special case of particulate fouling that involves living organisms... ketones, amino acids The hydrophobic character increases with retention time, e g.pentanol at 120 min A number of membrane related studies have demonstrated the use of LC-OCD in characterising dissolved organic matter (DOM) in surface waters (LeParc et al.,2007; Hong & Elimeleh,1997; Kim et al.,2009) and to identify the constituents that cause organic fouling 18 Expanding Issues in Desalination DOC... water during the filtration process in the pre-treatment The indicators of sufficient reduction of suspended solids and particles are turbidity values 4 Expanding Issues in Desalination of less than 0.5 Nephelometric Turbidity Unit (NTU) and silt density index (SDI) values of less than 4 Colloidal fouling: Deposition of metal oxides, proteins, silicates, organic matter, and clay creating a colloidal... the real potential of fouling because particles smaller than 0.45 µm responsible for fouling are not taken into consideration Their limitations have been evidenced by several studies [Khirani et al., 2005; Junga & Son, 2009.Hong et al., 2009] 6 Expanding Issues in Desalination 2.1.5.1 Silt density index (SDI) Silt density index (SDI) is a parameter characterising the fouling potential of water Particulate,... given without specifying the type of membrane used for the measurement is meaningless The Factors interfering with SDI measures are: The influence of pH shows an increase of SDI values from 4 to 6 when pH is increased from 7 to 8 and is mainly explained by the presence of dissolved substances (Ca, Mg…), which precipitate with the increasing of the pH The type of Membrane is determinant for SDI values . EXPANDING ISSUES IN DESALINATION Edited by Robert Y. Ning Expanding Issues in Desalination Edited by Robert Y. Ning Published by InTech Janeza Trdine. Printed in Croatia A free online edition of this book is available at www.intechopen.com Additional hard copies can be obtained from orders@intechweb.org Expanding Issues in Desalination, . 2009.Hong et al., 2009]. Expanding Issues in Desalination 6 2.1.5.1 Silt density index (SDI) Silt density index (SDI) is a parameter characterising the fouling potential of water. Particulate,