Tackling the biofouling challenge
- From: Vol 12, Issue 4 (April 2011)
- Category: Market Profile
- Country:
- Related Companies: Asahi Kasei, Blue Star, Dow Water, General Electric (GE), Hydranautics, Hyflux, inge AG, Koch Industries and Norit
Biofouling is one of the most significant challenges in seawater reverse osomosis desalination plants. Hiroko Kasama looks at the effectiveness of different pretreatment methods and examines the market prospects for this sector.
Most seawater reverse osmosos (SWRO) failures are caused by pretreatment failures, and most pretreatment failures are associated with biofouling – the formation of biofilm over membranes. Biofouling can cause a serious decline in operational efficiency and increased costs due to impaired filtration efficiency plus increased frequency of RO membrane cleaning and replacement.
Typically, a permeate flux decline of about 20-30% is ...
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