Ion Exchange Pretreatment for Desalting Membrane Processes to Maximize Clean Water Production

Project ID: 20092
Principal Investigator: Miguel Arias-Paic
Research Topic: Desalination and Water Treatment
Funded Fiscal Years: 2020, 2021 and 2022
Keywords: None

Research Question

The project will examine whether novel water treatment processes can increase water recovery and energy efficiency for downstream membrane processes. The project will test waters from the San Luis Demonstration Treatment Plant (Demo Plant) to demonstrate the process on the agricultural drainage water from the Demo Plant and other source waters would allow for process optimization for energy and water recovery and predictive model development.

Need and Benefit

The principal difficulty of operating a RO membrane treatment process is that scale formation will occur as sparingly soluble salts are concentrated through essentially pure water (greater than 99% salt removal) extraction through the membrane. As increasing quantities of essentially pure water are extracted during the RO process this process looks to limit the possibility of scaling by removing all scaling positively charged ions, thereby improving productivity (reducing waste generation) and increasing energy efficiency.

Contributing Partners

Contact the Principal Investigator for information about partners.

Research Products

Please contact research@usbr.gov about research products related to this project.


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Last Updated: 6/22/20