Dave, Of course there is pros and cons to desalination and RO. In fact, one of the previous articles that I wrote and that was published on Water Network dealt with this issue directly. Yes, the brine needs to be dealt with, and there will probably be in the not to distant future technology to handle brine stream treatment effectively. One item worth mentioning is RO pretreatment. Using pretreatment mechanisms to limit/reduce heavy metals, toxins, phosphorus before entering the RO system will allow significantly lower concentrations of these parameters in the brine streams that are discharged. I agree that other technologies need to be utilized in addition to RO to handle these parameters in third world/emerging countries with RO handling TDS reductions primarily.
Published by Nick Nicholas, App Eng/Technical Director at Genesis Water Technologies, Inc.
Dave,
Of course there is pros and cons to desalination and RO. In fact, one of the previous articles that I wrote and that was published on Water Network dealt with this issue directly.
Yes, the brine needs to be dealt with, and there will probably be in the not to distant future technology to handle brine stream treatment effectively.
One item worth mentioning is RO pretreatment. Using pretreatment mechanisms to limit/reduce heavy metals, toxins, phosphorus before entering the RO system will allow significantly lower concentrations of these parameters in the brine streams that are discharged.
I agree that other technologies need to be utilized in addition to RO to handle these parameters in third world/emerging countries with RO handling TDS reductions primarily.