REVERSE OSMOSIS -Bryces dad -differential pressure driven technique -capable of rejecting nearly all colloidal or dissolved matter

from an aqueous solution -based on property of certain polymers called semi-permeability(permeable to only water) -fairly high feed pressure is required (seawater: 60-80bar or (800-1200psig/ 55168275kPa)) -can separate salt from water with a rejection of 98-99.5% -energy recovery stage with efficiencies of up to 96% -nanofiltration will reject particles with a MW higher than 200 g/mole -water permeates through the membrane -differential pressure > osmotic pressure difference -permeate=dilute side -specific RO design software -RO units have fouling sensitivity -micro and ultrafiltration membranes can be used for pretreatment (smaller footprint, reduced chemical consumption, comparable capital cost, better quality feed) -RO is designed to remove dissolve salts. Trying to make it remove paticulates or other foulants is a misapplication of the technology. Foulants should be dealt with pretreatment -detailed ion-by-ion analysis of the feedwater is required at the design stage to make the RO system design and to check for problems with sparingly soluble salts -if the concentration of the sparingly soluble salts becomes too high, it will result in scale formation on the surface of the membrane and loss in performance (need antiscalant compounds or acid) -cross flow filtration: const flow of water flushing the rejected salts away from the membrane surface Ratio of the 2 flows determined by design recovery rate = product flow/feed flow -flow through ft2 usually 8-20gal/ft2 day -only way to positively determine the fouling nature of a given feed is to perform a pilot test yielding the silt density index (SDI)