Impact of SWMM Fouling and Position on the Performance of SWRO Systems in Operating Conditions of Minimum SEC

Due to water stress in the world in general desalination technologies are becoming increasingly important. Among the available technologies, reverse osmosis (RO) is the most widespread due to its reliability and efficiency compared to other technologies. The main weakness of RO is the loss of performance due to membrane fouling, which usually affects the water permeability coefficient (A), causing it to decrease. In RO desalination plants, fouling does not affect all spiral wound membrane modules (SWMMs) in the pressure vessels (PVs) in the same way. This will depend on the type of fouling and the position of the SWMM inside the PV. In this study, the impact of A and the position of the SWMM on the performance of the RO system is analyzed. For this purpose, decrements of up to 50% have been assumed for the seven SWMMs in series considering nine commercial SWMM models. The operating point analyzed is that which minimizes the specific energy consumption (SEC), a point obtained in a previous work carried out by the authors. The results show how the impact of A on the SWMM in the first position is more significant than the impact on modules that are in another position for the nine SWRO models studied. A drop of 50% in the coefficient A of the first element produces a permeate loss in the pressure pipe between 0.67 and 1.35 m3 d-1. Furthermore, it was observed that the models with the lowest coefficient A exhibited the highest performance losses in terms of permeate production when A was decreased.

Automated summary

Due to global water stress, desalination technologies are becoming increasingly important. Reverse osmosis (RO) is the most popular technology due to its reliability and efficiency. However, membrane fouling in RO systems can cause a decrease in water permeability coefficient (A) and impact system performance. This study analyzed the impact of A and the position of the spiral wound membrane modules (SWMMs) on RO system performance. The results showed that the SWMM in the first position had a more significant impact on system performance compared to modules in other positions.