Integrated Membrane System (IMS) to treat brackish water with high salinity: a new treatment concept

Abstract

The drinking water treatment plant of the Consorci d’Aigües de Tarragona (CAT) is located in the town of L’Ampolla (Spain) and supplies drinking water in the province of Tarragona (345.000 m³/d). The raw water intake is located at the low river basin of Ebro river, which has sporadically high values in salinity. In this sense, a semi-industrial plant has been developed and operated by the CAT and Abengoa Water in order to obtain data for the development of a large-scale plant with a capacity of 250,000 m³/d. The main objective of these tests are maximised in the salt rejection and the global water recovery as well as minimised in the costs for the industrial plant. The idea was to develop and test different configurations of integrated membrane systems. Therefore, ultrafiltration and reverse osmosis were initially installed and tested. Nowadays, microfiltration and nanofiltration has been installed and tested with the existing systems. This paper presents the main characteristics of the pilot plant, results and conclusions obtained during the last operation stage up to the date.

Keywords:

• Brackish water
• Drinking water
• Integrated membrane system (IMS)
• Hollow fibre membrane
• Microfiltration
• Ultrafiltration
• Reverse osmosis
• Nanofiltration
• Multi cartridge filter
• Membrane filtration integrity

Notes

Presented at the International Conference on Desalination for the Environment, Clean Water and Energy, European Desalination Society, 23–26 April 2012, Barcelona, Spain