Reducing costs for large-scale desalting plants using large-diameter, reverse osmosis membranes
- 作者：Tae I. Yun ; Christopher J. Gabelich ; Milton R. Cox ; Alexander A. Mofidi and Rick Lesan
- 关键词：Reverse osmosis ; Large diameter ; Large scale
- 刊名：Desalination
- 出版年：2006
- 期刊代码：24_00119164
- 类别：ce
- 出版时间：1 March 2006
- 卷：189
- 期：1-3
- 页码：141-154
- 文件大小：616 K
摘要
The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (Metropolitan), in conjunction with Koch Membrane Systems (KMS), evaluated three generations of a 16″-diameter by 60″-long reverse osmosis (RO) element in parallel with a commercially available 8″-diameter element. Design inefficiencies in the first-generation 16″ element resulted in a 20%lower specific flux when compared to an 8″ element. After making improvements in element design, the overall specific flux for the last-generation 16″ element was shown to be comparable to that of the 8″ element. However, a slightly higher fouling rate was observed for the 16″ element. An economic evaluation comparing costs using both 16″ and 8″ diameter elements for a 185-million gallon per day (mgd) [700 million l/d (ML/d]] RO plant showed that a design using 16″ elements may save as much as 12.4%($4.2 million per year) in combined capital and operations and maintenance costs. The present value of capital-cost savings alone was estimated at $44.3 million — a 27%reduction. The majority of these cost savings were attributed to reductions in train piping, support frame, miscellaneous train equipment (i.e., instrumentation, cleaning skid, and prefilters), and footprint.