Corrected normalized permeate flux for a statistics-based fouling detection method in seawater reverse osmosis process. Issue 51 (1st November 2016)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Kim, Minseok; Park, Beomseok; Lee, Young-Joo; Lim, Jae-Lim; Lee, Sangho; Kim, Suhan
• Is Part Of: Desalination and water treatment. Volume 57:Issue 51(2016)
• Page Start: 24574
• Page End: 24582
• Publication Date: 2016-11-01
• Subjects: Seawater reverse osmosis (SWRO) -- Normalization -- Corrected normalized permeate flux -- Statistics-based fouling detection method; Saline water conversion -- Periodicals; Saline water conversion; Water -- Purification; Periodicals; 628.167
• DOI: 10.1080/19443994.2016.1152646
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1944-3994

Abstract

Abstract: In the real-field application, the operation conditions for seawater reverse osmosis (SWRO) processes such as pressure, temperature, recovery rate, and feed concentration vary, which changes the permeate flow rate with no fouling. In order to detect fouling from the fluctuating permeate flow rates due to various operation conditions, they should be normalized. However, the normalization method using ASTM D4516 method still produces the fluctuation in the normalized permeate flow due to poor selections of osmotic pressure and temperature correction factor (TCF) equations, which do not reflect the characteristics of feed water and reverse osmosis membrane in the field very well. This work introduces the corrected normalized permeate flux (NPF) using the fitted osmotic pressure and TCF equations to minimize the fluctuation during a non-fouling situation and suggests a statistical approach to detect fouling by comparing the mean values of two groups with different variances. The laboratory-scale SWRO experiments with randomly changing operation conditions verify that the corrected NPF and the statistics-based fouling detection method works very well to find the early stage of fouling by humic acid. In addition, the fitted TCF equation affects the performance of the fouling detection method more than the fitted osmotic pressure equation.