• 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.

• 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.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.

• 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.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.

• 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.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 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.

• 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.

• 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.