VALORIZACIÓN DE MÓDULOS DE MEMBRANA DE ÓSMOSIS INVERSA RETIRADOS DE UNA PLANTA DE DESALACIÓN. DISEÑO DE LA INSTALACIÓN

Abstract

Every day, reverse osmosis (RO) membranes are retired from seawater desalination plants when the effluent produced does not meet the water quality demands required and then become membrane waste. Attending to the forecast, membrane desalination capacity installed around the world will be about 117.5 Mm3/day in 2020. Considering that RO membrane lifetime is about 5 to 7 years and its averaged drinking water production is 11-20 L/m2·h, so RO membranes produce between 481.8 to 674.5 m3 of water/m2 of membrane over their lifetime. Therefore, membrane daily waste generation is estimated to be from 174203.1 to 243877.1 m2 in 2020, which means 4500-9000 membrane modules wasted per day, approximately. This work shows the design of a membrane waste valorization plant, which allows carrying out two different processes to value exhausted membranes. The first process is focus on the recovery of membrane properties and allows reusing retired membranes and prolonging their lifetime. The second process consists of a membrane waste valorization, based on the oxidation of the membrane active layer, so it can be used as an ultrafiltration membrane module in other membrane processes.