• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.343-350
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• 2008

Many reports have warned of insufficient water supply in most countries in future and prospected providing safe and clean water become more difficult by lack of access to sustainable drinking water resources. Several facts and figures explained the impact by natural climate change and human activity results in the water scarcity and deterioration. Among many scientific solutions, the seawater desalination using a reverse osmosis membrane, so called SWRO (Seawater Reverse Osmosis) process, has been recognized as one of the most promising alternatives because of its stability and efficiency in producing large amount of drinking water from seawater through desalination by membrane filtration. Recently, in Korea, numerous researches are conducted to develop more productive and cost effective SWRO process for its wide implementation. The objective of this paper is to review the patents concerning SWRO technologies involving the plant engineering, maintenance including pretreatment of seawater and fouling control, module design, and mechanical units development for energy saving. The patents in Korea, U.S., Japan, Europe, and PCT were intensively researched and analyzed to provide the state of the art as well as leading edge technology on SWRO. This information can hopefully suggest meaningful guidelines on future research and development.

• Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.99-104
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• 2015

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the performance of forward osmosis (FO) system for harvesting microalgae cultivated in secondary sewage effluent. Microalgae species used in this study were chlorella sp. ADE4. The drawing agents used for forward osmosis system were seawater and concentrate of sea water reverse osmosis (SWRO) system. Chlorella sp. ADE4 cultured in secondary sewage effluent illustrated moderate efficiency in removal of total nitrogen (TN) (68%) and superior performance in total phosphorus (TP) removal (99%). Comparison of seawater and SWRO concentrate as drawing agent were made in FO membrane separation of the microalgae. The result from this study depicts that SWRO concentrate is strong drawing agent in FO membrane system providing an average dewatering rate of $4.8L/(m^2{\cdot}hr)$ compared to seawater with average dewatering of $2.9L/(m^2{\cdot}hr)$. Results obtained from this study indicated that FO system could be viable option for harvesting the microalgae for further biodiesel production. SWRO concentrate as a drawing agent could be very important finding in field of membrane technology for disposal of SWRO concentrate.

• 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.25 no.4
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• pp.573-579
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• 2011

As rapid advances in technologies continue, seawater reverse osmosis (SWRO) desalination systems are now more energy-efficient than conventional thermal processes. Some SWRO desalination plants can achieve the specific energy consumption (SEC) below 2 kWh/$m^3$. Along with the development of new membranes and high-performance pumps, energy recovery devices (ERD), which recover the hydraulic energy of brine, have been developed to enhance energy efficiency. In this work, we reviewed general aspects of ERD technologies and their market trends. The advantages and disadvantages of various EDR technologies were compared to explore the future directions of ERD development.

• Membrane and Water Treatment
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.15-29
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• 2014

Reverse Osmosis (RO) desalination has gained wide and increasing acceptance around the world as a straightforward undertaking to alleviate the alarming water crisis. An enhanced monitoring of the quality of the water feeding in seawater RO (SWRO) plant through the application of an effective pretreatment option is one of the keys to the success of RO technology in desalination plants. Over the past 10 years, advances in ultrafiltration (UF) membrane technologies in application for water and wastewater treatment have prompted an impetus for using membrane pretreatment in seawater desalination plants. By integrating SWRO plant with UF pretreatment, the rate of membrane fouling can be significantly reduced and thus extend the life of RO membrane. With the growing importance and significant advances attained in UF pretreatment, this review presents an overview of UF pretreatment in SWRO plants. The advantages offered by UF as an alternative of pretreatment option are compared to the existing conventionally used technologies. The current progress made in the integration of SWRO with UF pretreatment is also highlighted. Finally, the recent advances pursued in UF technology is reviewed in order to provide an insight and hence path the way for the future development of this technology.

• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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• v.26 no.6
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• pp.807-813
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• 2012

Flocculation and flotation are used as pretreatment steps prior to the reverse osmosis (RO) process. During seawater treatment, high temperature can change the water chemistry of seawater during the process of coagulation. It also affects bubble volume concentration (BVC) and bubble characteristics. Coagulants such as alum and ferric salts at $40^{\circ}C$ can also change flux rates in the seawater reverse osmosis (SWRO) process. In this study, the bubble characteristics in dissolved air flotation (DAF), used as a SWRO pretreatment process, were studied in synthetic seawater at $20^{\circ}C$ and $40^{\circ}C$. The flux of an RO membrane was monitored after dosing the synthetic seawater with coagulants at different temperatures. Results showed that BVC increases as the operating pressure increases and as the salt concentration decreases. The bubble size released at $40^{\circ}C$ is far smaller than that at $20^{\circ}C$The addition of a ferric salt is effective for turbidity removal in synthetic seawater at $20^{\circ}C$; it is more effective than alum. When synthetic seawater was dosed with a ferric salt, the RO membrane flux increased by 27 % at $40^{\circ}C$.

• Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.205-212
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• 2011

Reverse osmosis (RO) technology has developed over the past 40 years to control a 44% market share in the world desalting production capacity and an 80% share in the total number of desalination plants installed worldwide. The application of conventional and low-pressure membrane pretreatment processes to seawater RO (SWRO) desalination has undergone accelerated development over the past decade. Reliable pretreatment techniques are required for the successful operation of SWRO processes, since a major issue is membrane fouling associated with particulate matter/colloids, organic/inorganic compounds, and biological growth. While conventional pretreatment processes such as coagulation and granular media filtration have been widely used for SWRO, there has been an increased tendency toward the use of ultrafiltration/microfiltration (UF/MF) instead of conventional treatment techniques. The literature shows that both the conventional and the UF/MF membrane pretreatment processes have different advantages and disadvantages. This review suggests that, depending on the feed water quality conditions, the suitable integration of multiple pretreatment processes may be considered valid since this would utilize the benefits of each separate pretreatment.

• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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• v.33 no.6
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• pp.413-420
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• 2019

Pretreatment system of desalination process using seawater reverse osmosis(SWRO) membrane is the most critical step in order to prevent membrane fouling. One of the methods is coagulation-UF membrane process. Coagulation-UF membrane systems have been shown to be very efficient in removing turbidity and non-soluble and colloidal organics contained in the source water for SWRO pretreatment. Ferric salt coagulants are commonly applied in coagulation-UF process for pretreatment of SWRO process. But aluminum salts have not been applied in coagulation-UF pretreatment of SWRO process due to the SWRO membrane fouling by residual aluminum. This study was carried out to see the effect of residual matal salt on SWRO membrane followed by coagulation-UF pretreatment process. Experimental results showed that increased residual aluminum salts by coagulation-UF pretreatment process by using alum lead to the decreased SWRO membrane salt rejection and flux. As the salt rejection and flux of SWRO membrane decreased, the concentration of silica and residual aluminum decreased. However, when adjusting coagulation pH for coagulation-UF pretreatment process, the residual aluminum salt concentration was decreased and SWRO membrane flux was increased.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.42 no.3
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• pp.351-357
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• 2022

A conventional seawater reverse osmosis (SWRO) and a forward osmosis (FO) and reverse osmosis (RO) hybrid process to produce 1,000 m³/d of fresh water, were designed and compared in terms of carbon emission. When FO was adapted for the osmotic dilution, the required pressure for RO decreases, and thus energy consumption decreases. The decrease in carbon emission by decreased energy consumption (up to -0.73 kgCO₂/m³ using coal as the energy source) was compared with the increase in carbon emission by the FO system (+0.16 kgCO₂/m³), which is a function of various factors such as the number of FO modules and energy consumption. The comparison revealed that the FO-RO process causes less carbon emission compared with the SWRO process when the energy sources are coal and oil. However, if energy sources with low carbon emission such as solar, wind, and nuclear energy are selected, the carbon emission of the FO-RO process becomes higher than that of the SWRO process. This implies that the type of energy source is a key factor to determine the necessity of the FO-RO process from the aspect of carbon emission.

• 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.