Backwashing pressurized ultrafiltration using reverse osmosis brine in seawater desalination and its potential costs savings

This paper discusses the feasibility of using reverse osmosis concentrate to backwash ultrafiltration membranes in the seawater reverse osmosis desalination space. Brine is produced through DOW FILMTEC reverse osmosis elements and it backwashed every 90min to DOW ultrafiltration membranes. A side-by-side validation is done for 15d using two parallel ultrafiltration and reverse osmosis integrated systems. One line uses brine for backwashing, while the other uses conventional filtrated water. The optimization is proven to have the same cleaning efficiency than the conventional backwashing methods and no precipitation is observed in the fibers. An additional validation period that uses reverse osmosis brine during backwashes and only two backwash steps is also carried out successfully. These steps are the previously identified backwash top with air scour and forward flush. Fibers also show an excellent integrity after the whole experimental period. A model is built in order to analyze the backwash efficiency of the optimized conditions and the transmembrane pressure increases during the filtration cycle. The results show the same fouling tendency for the line operating with brine and the line operating with filtrated water. The efficiency of the ultrafiltration process is improved from 88 to 98% thanks to this optimization together with the previous researches. This represents filtrating 96min extra per day and a reduction of 100% in the filtrated water used during backwashes. The chemical equivalent concentration is also optimized from 0.28 to 0.06mg/L NaClO thanks to the adjustment of the chemically enhanced backwash frequency. This accounts for a 7.1% savings in the ultrafiltration step and for a 1.2% savings in the whole desalination process.