The water technology company is venturing into recycling seawater to curb freshwater shortages. This growing demand is a result of population growth and technological progress. Not only seawater, but brackish water has been considered. Reverse Osmosis (RO) it the primary process used by many companies because of its ease, but also multiple-effect distillation and multistage flash distillation fall under thermal technological processes. The byproduct of these procedures is brine or concentrates.
Brine industrial services production is powerfully affected by the source of water. Seawater recycling plants use 50% seawater whereas brackish recycling plants use between 15% and 30% brackish water. Both of these plants’ products have adverse effects on the environment. Its honorable discharge is done to designated authorized sites. Seawater brine is returned to the sea, whereas it is discharged into evaporation ponds or injected into dedicated evaporation wells. This is because of the brine from brackish water in far more detrimental to the environment.
A considerable number of brine recycling plants are inventing cutting-edge technologies to advance their brine industrial services. An essential part of this service is salt extraction now that many companies are venturing into this business. This goal can be achieved only if these advanced technologies become inexpensive. Other key issues include brine recycling plant location, product purity, facility staffing, material handling, and storage. Chemicals like bromine, chlorine, sodium and magnesium hydroxide, calcium carbonate, magnesium oxide are uneasy to store due to their reactive nature.
To effectively reduce brine contamination, there naturally has to be a combination of technological processes. Processes like reverse osmosis, followed by thermal evaporation and finally thermal crystallization, would be the best option on the published paper. Its practicality is unforeseeable because the latter two processes are way expensive.
When considering reverse osmosis, two limiting factors are recognized. Osmotic pressure and water chemistry are adversely affected by the solubility of different kinds of salts. Calcium carbonate, calcium sulfate, and silica are sparingly soluble affecting the maximum threshold limit of the brine recycling plants. When this process is compared to nature, sea desalinating plants work at maximum threshold limits of osmotic pressure and brine minimization is negligibly required. Looking also at brackish desalinating plants, brine chemistry severely limits the amount of concentrate produced acting as the rate-limiting step in the recovery process.
Compared to brackish recycling plants, the final brine solution is far from the maximum threshold limit of osmotic pressure. This inevitably makes the brine from brackish recycling plants problematic to dispose of. Considerable improvements in reverse osmosis technology would highly improve the recycling process to be just as brackish water plants.
Some of the reverse osmosis technologies used to overcome brine chemistry limitations include; high-efficiency reverse osmosis (HERO), closed-circuit desalination (CCD), and MaxH20 DESLATER. Of these three processes, the MaxH20 DESLATER is the best. The system includes an integrated salt precipitation unit that removes salts from the brine without the addition of chemicals. The process does not require further sludge dewatering treatments.
The MaxH20 DESALTER helps curb today’s brine management complications. This technology practically eliminates the recovery limitation of water chemistry by precipitating the sparingly soluble salts into pellets. This process also operates at a high velocity positively enhancing the reverse osmosis process with inherently high shear forces. MaxH20 DESLATER is designed for maximum production and recovery potential.
Even with the above technologies, room for marked improvement is offered to potential scientists who would come up with better technologies that are cheaper. Countries like Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Qatar who are leaders on brine production need help to progressively reduce their brine production effects on the environment.
