• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.177-184
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• 2011

Membrane fouling is an unavoidable phenomenon in operation of seawater reverse osmosis (SWRO) and major obstacle for economic and efficient operation. When fouling occurs on the membrane surface, the permeate flux is decreased, on the contrary, the trans-membrane pressure (TMP) is increased, therefore operation and maintaining costs and potential damage of membranes are able to the pivotal risks of the process. Chemical cleaning process is essential to prevent interruptions for effective RO membrane filtration process. This study focused on proper chemical cleaning condition for polyamide RO membranes of 4 companies. Several chemical agents were applied for chemical cleaning under numbers of operating conditions. Additionally, a monitoring tool of FEEM as autopsy analysis method is adapted for the prediction of organic bio-fouling.

• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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• v.27 no.5
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• pp.555-560
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• 2013

A cost analysis method for pretreament processes of a large scale seawater desalination plant was considered using a cost estimation model, WaTER (Water Treatment Estimation Routine). This model is based on cost functions of U.S. EPA to conduct economic analysis of water treatment facilities. A virtual seawater desalination plant which has pretreatment production capacity of $100,000m^3$ per day was chosen as a model plant. Dual media filtration and microfiltration systems were compared as pretreatment process, and the following reverse osmosis process was modeled. As a result, microfiltration showed a price competitiveness in condition of operating with reverse osmosis process by reducing the loads of water treatment and membrane cleaning despite it's high annual cost.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• v.55 no.6
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• pp.762-766
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• 2017

Energy recovery device (ERD) is used to save energy consumption in seawater reverse osmosis processes. However, small-scale ERDs (<$100m^3/d$) are hardly observed in seawater desalination market. In South Korea, most of seawater desalination plants for drinking water production are small-scaled and have been operated in island areas or on ships. Thus, the effect of ERDs for these small-scale SWRO processes should not be neglected. In this work, the small-scale SWRO processes are designed and analyzed in terms of energy consumption with/without ERD. The realistic efficiencies of high pressure pumps are considered for the energy analyses. The unit cost of electricity depending on the application place (e.g., inland and island areas, on ships) is investigated to calculate the energy cost for unit water production in various SWRO applications classified by plant capacity, application place, and the installation of ERD. As a result, the energy cost can be saved up to $1,640.4KRW/m^3$ when ERD is applied, and the saving effect increases at smaller plants on ships. In conclusion, the development of small-scale ERDs are necessary because small-scale SWRO processes are dominant in Korean seawater desalination market, and the electricity saving effect becomes higher at smaller-scaled system.

• Journal of the Korea Society for Simulation
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• v.28 no.4
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• pp.1-10
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• 2019

The Sea Water Reverse Osmosis (SWRO) plant should take into account the availability of the plant from the design stage for long-term and continuous fresh water production. As it occurs, it is necessary to establish a corrective maintenance plan and preventive maintenance plan to maintain availability. In the field of complex engineering structures such as seawater desalination plants, it is difficult to estimate the reliability or availability of the system in a mathematical way. This study develops RAM analysis framework and model, and proposes discrete event simulation model as a application sowtware specialized for seawater desalination plant. Considering the characteristics of the plant maintenance, in case of corrective maintenance, we propose a preventive maintenance policy that not only repairs or replaces a single-broken part, but also simultaneously maintains all accessible parts according to the level of overhaul. A case study was conducted to estimate the availability of the system based on the field data of the seawater desalination plant in Korea and Saudi Arabia. The result was close to the expected availability of the plant.

• 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.24 no.2
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• pp.143-155
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• 2010

Fouling by inorganic scales needs to be prevented to effectively operate sea water reverse osmosis(SWRO) membrane systems. The extents of inorganic scaling with different array designs including one-pass, two-pass and several hybrid designs were evaluated using seawater from southern sea near the city of Chang-Won. The used methods for evaluation were Stiff and Davis Index(S&DSI) calculation and several laboratory experiments. The formation potential of inorganic scale fouling was quite great under the examined conditions, which was confirmed by the laboratory experimental results. The inorganic scale was not avoidable fouling if any anti-scaling measures were not applied. The RO showed decreased flux under the scale formation conditions. The increases in S&DSI from 1.43 to 5 made small decreases in flux, which indicated that formation of inorganic scales had more substantial effects on RO flux than amount of inorganic scales.

• 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.

• Journal of Korean Society for Quality Management
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• v.48 no.1
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• pp.171-186
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• 2020

Purpose: The purpose of this study is conducting of predictive models that considered multicollinearity of independent variables in order to carry out more efficient and reliable predictions about differential pressure in seawater reverse osmosis. Methods: The main variables of each RO system are extracted through factor analysis. Common variables are derived through comparison of RO system # 1 and RO system # 2. In order to carry out the prediction modeling about the differential pressure, which is the target variable, we constructed the prediction model reflecting the regression analysis, the artificial neural network, and the support vector machine in R package, and figured out the superiority of the model by comparing RMSE. Results: The number of factors extracted from factor analysis of RO system #1 and RO system #2 is same. And the value of variability(% Var) increased as step proceeds according to the analysis procedure. As a result of deriving the average RMSE of the models, the overall prediction of the SVM was superior to the other models. Conclusion: This study is meaningful in that it has been conducting a demonstration study of considering the multicollinearity of independent variables. Before establishing a predictive model for a target variable, it would be more accurate predictive model if the relevant variables are derived and reflected.

• 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.

• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.401-408
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• 2016

Desalination is getting more attention as an alternative to solve a global water shortage problem in the future. Especially, a desalination technology is being expected as a new growth engine of Korea's overseas plant business besides one of the solutions of domestic water shortage problem. In the past, a thermal evaporation technology was a predominant method in desalination market, but more than 75% of the current market is hold by a membrane-based reverse osmosis technology because of its lower energy consumption rate for desalination. In the future, it is expected to have more energy efficient desalination process. Accordingly, various processes are being developed to further enhance the desalination energy efficiency. One of the promising technologies is a desalination process combined with Pressure Retarded Osmosis (PRO) process. The PRO technology is able to generate energy by using osmotic pressure of seawater or desalination brine. And the other benefits are that it has no emission of $CO_2$ and the limited impact of external environmental factors. However, it is not commercialized yet because a high-performance PRO membrane and module, and a PRO system optimization technology is not sufficiently developed. In this paper, the recent research direction and progress of the SWRO-PRO hybrid desalination was discussed regarding a PRO membrane and module, an energy recovery system, pre-treatment and system optimization technologies, and so on.