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Several full-scale seawater desalination projects are currently under development in theUSA, many of which are envisioned to include co-location at a coastal power generatingfacility. These power generating facilities use large volumes of seawater for cooling,which offers the desalination facility the ability to obtain feed water and concentratedisposal through existing seawater intake and outfall infrastructure. Therefore, thedesalination process has the option of operating on the ambient temperature intake or thewarmer power-plant cooling-loop discharge. West Basin Municipal Water District hasoperated a long-term pilot testing program to evaluate desalination technology on bothsources. The testing has occurred over a four-year period at the El Segundo PowerGenerating Station in El Segundo, California.This paper provides data on the operation of membrane pretreatment processes as well asreverse osmosis membranes. A membrane desalination plant operating on the warmerreturn water would have the advantage of a decreased energy usage associated with adecrease in water viscosity. On the other hand, the salinity of the product produced fromthe warmer water would be slightly higher in concentration. In addition, the warmerwater may promote biological growth, which could cause a higher fouling potential forthe membrane treatment processes. For these reasons both feed sources warrantinvestigation.The data set is considered unique and of substantial value to the seawater desalinationcommunity, because it provides comparative data (ambient and warm water sources)from the same power plant seawater intake. One of the primary goals of the test programis to establish the performance of pretreatment and desalination processes on each source.This information will provide designers and developers of full-scale desalination projectsdirect comparisons that have not been previously available. Previous publications on theproject have reported early performance of microfiltration and reverse osmosis on theambient temperature intake and various pretreatment process iterations, involvingchloramination and pre-strainers. Includes 6 references, tables, figures.

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Edition: Vol. - No. Published: 03/01/2007 Number of Pages: 19File Size: 1 file , 2.4 MB