Experimental Evaluation of RO Membranes for Qatar Seawater Condition

EasyChair Preprint no. 6607

Abstract

The deficiency of fresh water resources in arid regions such as Gulf cooperation council (GCC) countries has compelled them to opt for desalination to fulfill their water needs. The seawater reverse osmosis (SWRO) has the lowest specific power consumption as compared to other desalination technologies. However, because of harsh seawater conditions of Qatar, thermal desalination that include multi stage flash (MSF) and multi effect desalination (MED) hold major shares in the desalination market. Recent improvements in pretreatments and membrane technology, the reverse osmosis (RO) share is growing but still more research is required to handle high salinity and unit water cost with MSF and MED technologies. In the present work, the seawater from Ras Abu Fontas, Qatar has been used to test RO membranes (Filmtec, SW30HRLE-4040). The RO test rig is comprised of four 4-inch elements in series. It is found that the permeate quality and specific power consumption improve with the feed flow rate. The salt rejection is found to be in the range of 98-99% that is below the minimum salt rejection at standard condition because of high seawater salinity. In addition, the mathematical model is developed which predicts experimental data well with the maximum error of 14.8%.

Keyphrases: Qatar, recovery ratio, reverse osmosis, RO, salt rejection, Specific power consumption, TDS

@Booklet{EasyChair:6607,
  author = {Furqan Tahir and Abdelnasser Mabrouk},
  title = {Experimental Evaluation of RO Membranes for Qatar Seawater Condition},
  howpublished = {EasyChair Preprint no. 6607},

  year = {EasyChair, 2021}}