HIGHER RECOVERY AT LOWER COSTS
BRINE MANAGEMENT CHALLENGE
Whether treating industrial, brackish or seawater, one of the biggest challenges in using reverse omsmosis (RO) is the management and disposal of produced concentrate. The cost of disposing of concentrate is related to its volume, so the answer is make less of it.
Unfortunately in high TDS feed streams, simply adding more RO stages to reduce concentrate, results in increased operating pressures and increased fouling, scaling due to low shearing concentrate flow rates.
Some applications try combining RO with a thermal evaporator, allowing the RO to run at lower recovery rates, with the thermal evaporator doing the bulk of the work in reducing concentrate volume. The RO-Thermal evaporator treatment works however it comes at a price; higher capital and operating costs with increased CO2 emmisions.
The solution in reducing brine management costs, CO2 emisisons and maxizing water recovery is Forward Water Technologies MAX-FO system capable of operating up to 260,000 ppm total dissolved solids.
FORWARD WATER SOLUTION
The MAX-FO is not constrained by limits and challenges commonly associated with reverse osmosis (RO) and thermal evaporators (TE) as the MAX-FO is driven by forward osmosis (FO), and not pressure or "bulk boiling" as with RO and TE's.
FO is a unique process that is not pressure driven but uses osmosis as the mechanism in which to extract clean water from brines across a membrane. FO operates with a “draw” or salt solution on one side of the membrane and brine on the other.
As the salt solution used is significantly higher in osmotic energy than the brine being treated, clean water is spontaneously drawn across the membrane and into the salt solution. Separation of the clean water from the draw solution is achieved by applying a low-grade heat (60 -90) to the solution, causing the draw solution to phase change out of solution as a gas, leaving pure water behind.
The result a system capable of operating up to 260,000 ppm TDS, brine concentrations up to 95%, energy reduction up to 45%, water recovery up to 95% and more....
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Higher recovery rates up to 95% recovery
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Robust, wide operating range - low fouling, low scaling
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Solar thermal, geothermal can be used in operations
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Small footprint with FO unit
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Lower CO2 - FO uses up to 45% less energy