GE Water & Process Technologies uses spiral-wound membranes - tightly packed filter material sandwiched between mesh spacers and wrapped in a small-diameter tube - to desalt and demineralize process water. The membrane's operating conditions are fine-tuned to balance the flux, or the amount of water which passes through the membrane, with the specific rejection rates of contaminants to achieve up to 99.8% salt rejection at low pressures and high flux rates.
Opposite osmosis
Opposite osmosis is a technology of treatment of water which makes it possible to produce in a continuous and reliable way of great quantities of pure water. Opposite osmosis is a physical process which does not require chemicals. An opposite installation of osmosis removes almost all rock salt, heavy metals, bacteria, viruses and pyrogenic.
Applications:
- Agro-alimentary
- Printing works
- Because wash
-...
Reverse osmosis (RO) is used to reduce dissolved solids from feed waters with salinities up to 45,000 ppm TDS (total dissolved solids). Municipalities and industrial facilities are able to use RO permeate as a consistently pure drinking water supply and to transform drinking water to high purity water for industrial use at microelectronics, food and beverage, power, and pharmaceutical facilities. The technology is also very effective at removing bacteria, pyrogens, and organic contaminants.
Reverse osmosis separation technology is used to remove dissolved impurities from water through the use of a semi-permeable membrane. RO involves the reversal of flow through a membrane from a high salinity, or concentrated, solution to the high purity, or "permeate", stream on the opposite side of the membrane. Pressure is used as the driving force for the separation. The applied pressure (P) must be in excess of the osmotic pressure of the dissolved contaminants to allow flow across the membrane.
The access to water sources is an important issue where there is poor availability of well and surface water. This is particularly true in desert areas or wherever the possibility of desalinating sea water could be an advantage because of the difficulties of drilling deep wells or due to the extremely poor quality of the surface water.
The technologies employed by BONO Artes in the desalination of sea water are based on membrane processes.
In particular the "heart" of the process scheme is a Reverse Osmosis unit where saline water is pumped in cross flow on the elements with enough pressure to overcome the high osmotic pressure and enable a satisfactory recovery factor.
Energy saving solutions are implemented with high-rejection energy saving permeators and with the use of "energy recovery" device enabling the energy of the high pressure concentrate to be transferred to the incoming feed water thus reducing the required power per unit of desalinated water.
Customers in water-scarce regions find that the Seawater Reverse Osmosis (SWRO) Series from GE Water & Process Technologies solves their need for desalination while optimizing operating costs. The SWRO Series covers a range of customer applications, including:
Boiler feed water make-up
Irrigation water
Plant process make-up water
Small community potable water demand
