Electronic water treatment useful in reverse osmosis systems

Reverse Osmosis (RO) is used in processes requiring high-quality, purified water, such in semi- conductor processing or biochemical applications and can be used to treat boiler feed water, industrial wastewater or process water. A water purification technique, it reduces the quantity of dissolved solids in solution. RO uses waterline pressure together with energy consuming pressurizing pumps that increase the required yield. It is essentially a molecular squeezing process that causes H20 molecules to separate from the contaminants. The separated water molecules then pass through to the inside of the membrane on to a holding reservoir. The contaminants are washed from the membrane and removed.

One of the major problems of RO systems is the fouling of membranes which can quickly become clogged by hard water scale resulting in less membrane space for the water to pass through, therefore leading to more pressure being required to reach the necessary yield. The consequences are higher energy use, an increase of the cleaning frequency and a shorter life span of the membranes. This will cause the membrane water treatment process to become much more expensive.

A reverse osmosis membrane must be freely permeable to water, highly impermeable to solutes, and able to withstand high operating pressures. Ideally, it should also be resistant to scaling and fouling by contaminants in the feed water. Water hardness, also known as limescale, is made up of calcium and magnesium carbonates and can be found in both city and well and spring water sources. Hard water (above 7 grains of hardness) will shorten the life of the RO's membrane. Limescale fouling occurs when contaminants accumulate on the membrane surface effectively plugging the membrane. The results of limescale build-up are a higher pressure drop across the system. This translates into higher operating costs and eventually the need to clean or replace the RO membranes.

Scaling refers to the precipitation and deposition within the system and will to some extent take place eventually given the extremely fine pore size of an RO membrane no matter how effective the pre- treatment. However, by having proper pre-treatment in place, it is possible to minimize RO downtime and maintenance costs. It will maximize efficiency and membrane life by minimizing fouling, scaling and membrane degradation while optimizing product flow.

Electronic Water Treatment (EWT) is the ideal solution for preventing limescale build-up in RO membranes. A fit and forget technology it requires no plumbing, chemicals or salt.

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Taxonomy

• Wastewater Treatment
• Energy Efficiency
• Filtration