Performance and Cost Effectiveness of Reverse Osmosis and Electrodialysis Reversal for Desalination of Brackish Groundwater Containing High Silica
反渗透和电渗析反渗透用于含高硅微咸水淡化的性能和成本效益
Brackish water desalination is an important alternative for developing drinking water sources in
water-scarce arid regions. Both electrodialysis reversal (EDR) and reverse osmosis (RO) are
suitable technologies for desalination of brackish groundwater. The RO pilot testing, conducted
with the groundwater from San Pasqual water basin (San Diego, California), containing 1300 mg/L of
TDS and 60 mg/L of silica, demonstrated that the RO process could be operated at 10 gfd with
75% recovery and 96% total dissolved solids (TDS) rejection with an estimated cleaning frequency of 2 months. The
performance of the EDR process, predicted from the modeling using WATSYS software for the
same water chemistry, indicated that this process could be operated at 88% recovery with the
TDS rejection of 78%. The order of magnitude cost estimates (-30% and +50%) were prepared
for three different feed flow scenarios (3, 5, 8 MGD) for RO and EDR treating the same
groundwater suggested that both processes were cost comparable. However, the costs associated
with the concentrate disposal were not considered in this cost estimation. Includes 9 references, tables, figures.