TY - JOUR
T1 - Optimizing seawater reverse osmosis with internally staged design to improve product water quality and energy efficiency
AU - Kim, Jungbin
AU - Hong, Seungkwan
N1 - Funding Information:
This work is supported by the Korea Agency for Infrastructure Technology Advancement (KAIA) grant funded by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport (Grant 18IFIP-B116952-03 ).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 Elsevier B.V.
PY - 2018/12/15
Y1 - 2018/12/15
N2 - Internally staged design (ISD) was introduced as a method to lower front reverse osmosis (RO) element fluxes, yielding operational benefits. Systematic selection of the best ISD combinations has not been conducted as it is dependent on operating conditions (i.e., RO recovery and average flux). This study aimed to optimize seawater reverse osmosis (SWRO) operations using ISD for better product water quality and energy efficiency. A total of 36 ISD combinations were configured with three commercial SWRO membranes and systematically examined under varying operating conditions which were simulations of typical SWRO operation. A Pareto-optimal front, a non-dominated feasible solution set, was created to understand the tradeoff relationship between permeate quality and specific energy consumption while considering all parameters. The Pareto-optimal front was classified into five phases, and an analysis of phase changes provided optimal parameter settings for SWRO operation. However, the occurrence of colloidal fouling altered optimal ISD combinations on the Pareto-optimal front. Particularly, when SWRO membranes were fouled at high-recovery and -flux conditions, ISD combinations employing three different membrane types exhibited superior performance in terms of energy efficiency. With these results, the best SWRO operation was suggested depending on its performance requirements, and the advantages of ISD were further delineated.
AB - Internally staged design (ISD) was introduced as a method to lower front reverse osmosis (RO) element fluxes, yielding operational benefits. Systematic selection of the best ISD combinations has not been conducted as it is dependent on operating conditions (i.e., RO recovery and average flux). This study aimed to optimize seawater reverse osmosis (SWRO) operations using ISD for better product water quality and energy efficiency. A total of 36 ISD combinations were configured with three commercial SWRO membranes and systematically examined under varying operating conditions which were simulations of typical SWRO operation. A Pareto-optimal front, a non-dominated feasible solution set, was created to understand the tradeoff relationship between permeate quality and specific energy consumption while considering all parameters. The Pareto-optimal front was classified into five phases, and an analysis of phase changes provided optimal parameter settings for SWRO operation. However, the occurrence of colloidal fouling altered optimal ISD combinations on the Pareto-optimal front. Particularly, when SWRO membranes were fouled at high-recovery and -flux conditions, ISD combinations employing three different membrane types exhibited superior performance in terms of energy efficiency. With these results, the best SWRO operation was suggested depending on its performance requirements, and the advantages of ISD were further delineated.
KW - Colloidal fouling
KW - Energy efficiency
KW - Internally staged design
KW - Optimization
KW - Seawater reverse osmosis
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85054201870&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.memsci.2018.09.046
DO - 10.1016/j.memsci.2018.09.046
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85054201870
SN - 0376-7388
VL - 568
SP - 76
EP - 86
JO - Jornal of Membrane Science
JF - Jornal of Membrane Science
ER -