• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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• v.24 no.6
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• pp.735-741
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• 2010

A pilot test was carried out to investigate the long term operation characteristics of Microfiltration (MF) system as a pretreatment for seawater reverse osmosis (SWRO) processes for two years. A commercialized MF module with pressurized operation type was used to filter seawater to remove particles which can foul reverse osmosis (RO) membrane. Silt Density Index (SDI) values of filtered seawater by the MF system were ranged from 0.14 to 1.79, which meet the SDI standard for RO feed water as depicted in previous literatures. Although the tested seawater is quite clean (i.e., dissolved organic cabon (DOC) concentration and turbidity were about 1 mg/l and less than 1 NTU, respectively) enough not to foul the MF membrane, steep increase in trans-membrane pressure (TMP) with a constant flux were observed over a whole operation period. A set of operation and water analysis data implies that the steep increase in TMP was resulted from iron and maganese fouling by the combination of metal corrosion by seawater and oxidation state by aeration and residual chlorine.

• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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• v.30 no.3
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• pp.299-312
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• 2016

The main objective of this paper is to develop computer simulation program for performance evaluation and cost estimation of a reverse osmosis (RO) and pressure-retarded osmosis (PRO) hybrid process to propose guidelines for its economic competitiveness use in the field. A solution-diffusion model modified with film theory and a simple cost model was applied to the simulation program. Using the simulation program, the effects of various factors, including the Operating conditions, membrane properties, and cost parameters on the RO and RO-PRO hybrid process performance and cost were examined. The simulation results showed that the RO-PRO hybrid process can be economically competitive with the RO process when electricity cost is more than 0.2 $/kWh, the PRO membrane cost is same as RO membrane cost, the power density is more than $8W/m^2$ and PRO recovery is same as 1/(1-RO recovery).

• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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• v.30 no.5
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• pp.521-532
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• 2016

Seawater desalination market after global economic crisis has been stalled due to the market uncertainties and decreased demand in desalination. It is important to review the status of the market and to estimate the appropriate share of Forward osmosis-Reverse Osmosis (FO-RO) hybrid desalination technology by figuring out the outlook of the desalination market. Main part of the desalination market will still be MENA (Middle East and North Africa) in the near future due to the fast population increase and high dependency of fossil fuel in the region. The market for FO-RO hybrid technology, however, might be smaller than the conventional SWRO desalination market anyway because of aesthetic issues from using wastewater as raw water and higher costs associated with capex. Therefore, it is essential to improve FO membrane performance and system operation technologies in order to make the hybrid technology attractive compared to the conventional SWRO technology.

• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.89-96
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• 2015

Smart water grid is a water network with communication to save water and energy using various water resources. In smart water grid, water product from the various sources can be blended to be supplied to end-users. The product water blending was reported by literatures while feed water blending has been rarely reported so far. In this work, a commercial reverse osmosis (RO) system design software provided by a membrane manufacturer was used to elucidate the effect of feed water blending on the performance of seawater reverse osmosis (SWRO) plant. Fresh water from exisiting water resource was assumed to be blended to seawater to decrease salt concentration of the RO feed water. The feed water blending can simplify the RO system from double to single pass and decrease seawater intake amount, the unit prices of the RO system components including high pressure pump, and operation risk. Due to the increase in RO plant capacity with the feed water blending, however, the RO membrane area and total power consumption increase at higher water blending rates. Therefore, a specific benefit-cost analysis should be carried out to apply the feed water blending to SWRO plants.

• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.261-272
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• 2013

Algae boom (Red tide) in south coastal area of Korea has been appeared several times during a decade. If algae boom appears in the desalination plant, media filter and UF filter are clogged quickly, and the plant should be shutdown. In general, Algae can be removed from water by flotation better than by sedimentation, because of the low density of algal cell. The purpose of this study conducts the CFD simulation of DAF flotation basin to apply the design of the dissolved air flotation with ball filter in the Test Bed for SWRO desalination plant. In this study, Eulerian-Eulerian multiphase model was applied to simulate the behavior of air bubbles and seawater. Density difference model and gravity were used. But de-sludge process and mass transfer between air bubbles and seawater were ignored. Main parameter is hydraulic loading rate which is varied from 20 m/hr to 27.5 m/hr. Geometry of flotation basin were changed to improve the DAF performance. According to the result of this study, the increase of hydraulic loading rate causes that the flow in the separation basin is widely affected and the concentration of air is increased. The flow pattern in the contact zone of flotation basin is greatly affected by the location of nozzle header. When the nozzle header was installed not the bottom of the contact zone but the above, the opportunity of contact between influent and recycle flow was increased.

• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.311-319
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• 2017

Scale formation is inevitable problem when seawater is treated by vacuum membrane distillation. The reason is the high concentration of calcium ion($Ca^{2+}$), sulfate ion(${SO_4}^{2-}$) and bicarbonate ion(${HCO_3}^-$). These ions form calcium sulfate($CaSO_4$) and calcium carbonate($CaCO_3$) on the membrane. The scale formed on membrane has to be removed, because the flux can be severely reduced and membrane wetting can be incurred. This study was carried out to investigate scale formation and effectiveness of acid cleaning in vacuum membrane distillation for SWRO brine treatment. It was found that permeate flux gradually declined until volume concentration factor(VCF) reached around 1.55 and membrane wetting started over VCF over 1.6 in the formation of precipitates containing $CaSO_4$ during VMD operation. In contrast, when calcium carbonate formed on membrane, permeate flux was gradually reduced until VCF 3.0. The precipitates containing both $CaSO_4$ and $CaCO_3$ were formed on the membrane surface and in the membrane pore.

• Journal of Korean Society of Environmental Engineers
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• v.35 no.3
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• pp.200-205
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• 2013

Pretreatment process is the critical step of RO (Reverse Osmosis) membrane desalination plant in order to prevent RO membrane fouling. The pretreatment as a key component of RO process must be designed to produce a constant and high quality RO feedwater which has low silt density index (SDI). This experiment was conducted to assess parameters affecting SDI value, such as pH, seawater turbidity, temperature, and coagulant dose. The experimental results indicated that the source seawater turbidity did cause little effects on SDI values of filtered water. The 0.45 um hydrophilic membrane was more appropriate than the hydrophobic membrane for measuring SDI. The SDI value was increased with decreasing pH under the condition of below pH 7.0. In addition, the water temperature significantly affected the SDI values, showing higher SDI value with lower water temperature.

• International Journal of Fluid Machinery and Systems
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• v.3 no.4
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• pp.369-378
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• 2010

The creation of the hydraulic turbine flow factor map will undoubtedly benefit its design by decreasing both the design cycle time and product cost. In this paper, the geometry and flow variables, which effectively affect the flow factor, are proposed, analyzed and determined. These flow variables are further used to create the operating condition maps by using different model approaches categorized into Response Surface Method (RSM) and Artificial Neural Network (ANN). The accuracies of models created by different approaches are compared and the performances of model approaches are analyzed. The influences of chosen variables and the combination of Principle Component Analysis (PCA) and model approaches are also studied. The comparison results between predicted and actual flow factors suggest that two-hidden-layer Feed-forward Neural Network (FFNN), and one.hidden-layer FFNN with PCA has the best performance on forming this mapping, and are accurate sufficiently for hydraulic turbine design.

• Journal of Korean Society of Environmental Engineers
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• v.31 no.1
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• pp.51-57
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• 2009

Biofouling in seawater reverse osmosis (SWRO) desalination process causes many problems such as flux decline, biodegradation of membrane, increased cleaning time, and increased energy consumption and operational cost. Therefore biofouling is considered as the most critical problem in system operation. To control biofouling in early stage, detection of the most problematic bacteria causing biofouling is required. In this study, six model bacteria were chosen; Bacillus sp., Flavobacterium sp., Mycobacterium sp., Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Pseudomonas fluorescens, and Rhodobacter sp. based on report in the literature and phylogenetic analysis of seawater intake and fouled RO membrane. The adhesion to RO membrane, the high pressure resistance, and the hydrophobicity of the six model bacteria were examined to find out their fouling potential. Rhodobacter sp. and Mycobacterium sp. were found to attach very well to RO membrane surface compared to others used in this study. The test of hydrophobicity revealed that the bacteria which have high hydrophobicity or similar contact angle with RO membrane ($63^{\circ}$ of contact angle) easily attached to RO membrane surface. P. aeruginosa which is highly hydrophilic ($23.07^{\circ}$ of contact angle) showed the least adhesion characteristic among six model bacteria. After applying a pressure of 800 psi to the sample, Rhodobacter sp. was found to show the highest reduction rate; with 59-73% of the cells removed from the membrane under pressure. P. fluorescens on the other hand analyzed as the most pressure resistant bacteria among six model bacteria. The difference between reduction rates using direct counting and plate counting indicates that the viability of each model bacteria was affected significantly from the high pressure. Most cells subjected to high pressure were unable to form colonies even thought they maintained their structural integrity.

• Membrane Journal
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.301-309
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• 2015

Importance of pretreatment for seawater desalination is growing rapidly. Proper selection of pretreatment is critical for the successful, long-term operation in the seawater desalination plant such as seawater reverse osmosis (SWRO). The purposes of seawater pretreatment are to remove particulate, colloidal materials, organic, inorganic materials, microorganisms and their by-products present in the seawater, and thus to improve the performance of seawater desalination systems. However, pretreatment is most challenging for designing and operating seawater desalination plants because of fluctuations of water qualities, site specifications and wide ranges of target materials present in the seawater to be treated. In addition, it is also becoming evident increasingly that microscopic algae are a major cause of operational problems, for example, membrane fouling which is long-standing problem in SWRO process. Pretreatment strategies prior to the operation of seawater desalination technologies should be even more complicated by algae blooms and release of their harmful by-products in marine environment. This paper reviews the roles of various pretreatment methods in seawater desalination process. Benefits and drawbacks are described, which should be taken into account in future studies on selecting pretreatment for seawater desalination process.