Municipal and Industrial Water Production
Securing sustainable water supply is a major challenge for inland municipalities, where access to conventional freshwater sources is limited or declining. As pressure on urban water supply grows, water recycling and reuse has increasingly become an important part of urban water cycle management in many parts of the world. However, the elevated salinity of inland water resources (including recycled water) is a limiting factor to broad application of such waters for potable or industrial use. In this context, Reverse Osmosis (RO) desalination has been identified as a major component of the solution to water salinity problems. With significant improvement in the cost effectiveness of membrane based desalination processes, a new raft of opportunities have appeared for beneficial use of saline waters. To this end, recycled water is now an important component of the total portfolio of urban water supply options in many parts of the world.
The Challenge
Because of the large scale of municipal water production and water recycling projects, the safe and cost effective disposal of RO concentrate has become identified as a limiting factor for the broader use of mildly saline or alkaline water resources, particularly in inland regions. The issue of safe and cost-effective disposal of reject brine from inland salt reduction plants, where sea disposal option is not available, is a major constraint.
To facilitate widest possible use of desalted recycled water or brackish groundwater, technically robust and cost effective brine management solutions are needed.
Geo-Processors’ Solutions
As the key to safe and cost effective disposal of brine, SAL-PROC™ technology may be used effectively as either a pre-treatment step prior to regulated discharge of the treated effluent (in the case of coastal operations), or as a secondary desalination step for further water recovery and volume reduction. Where the options for sea discharge or blending with sewage treatment plant effluent are not available, SAL-PROC™ technology may be utilised to treat the residual brine exhaustively in order to achieve a ZLD outcome. The recovered salt and mineral by-products may be used internally or sold to the market to offset the cost of additional treatment.
SAL-PROC™ enables the implementation of low cost, low energy and environmentally sustainable solutions for safe disposal of salt reduced brines from water recycling facilities, while meeting the water quality requirements of a range of potential recycled water users.
