Wastewater reuse through RO: a case study of four RO plants producing industrial water

Abstract

Because of water scarcity in some regions of the Netherlands and new environmental concepts of water withdrawal, Dutch industrial water production has been shifting from surface water or scarce groundwater to wastewater in recent years. Because of this transformation, it is important to evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of using wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) effl uent as a source to produce industrial water, and to gain knowledge about water recycling and treatment. Reverse osmosis (RO) treatment is mostly used to produce water for industry. Four selected Dutch RO plants producing industrial water are analysed in this paper. Demineralized Water Plant (DWP) DECO and DWP Sas van Gent are using WWTP effl uent as source water; DWP Baanhoek and DWP Botlek are producing industrial water from surface water. The alternative water source alters pre-treatment needs and RO operations. Compared to surface water, WWTP effl uent requires more pre-treatment to prevent UF and RO membranes from fouling. Detailed comparisons between both types of RO plants were made based on the following criteria: 1. Feed water qualities, including the seasonal changes for the surface water and quality fl uctuation for WWTP effl uent; 2. Pre-treatment methods in compliance with the feed water situation; 3. RO operational problems during both surface water and effl uent water desalination; 4. Risk of effl uent water quantity shortage and quality insuffi ciency and management. Finally, the practice and experiences of the RO plants are summarized.

Direct water reclamation from sewage using ceramic tight ultra- and nanofiltration

“…conventional treatment, municipal sewage is usually led through primary settlers, activated sludge process, secondary settlers, whereas the sludge is stabilised in a digester prior to dewatering and disposal ( Fig. 1) [25,34]. However, the conventional RO-based water recycle technology requires a large footprint and does not make optimal use of energy, water and nutrient reuse [19,27].…”

A techno-economic analysis of membrane-based advanced treatment processes for the reuse of municipal wastewater

“…energy consumption) of reclamation processes is the WWTP effluent quality. To obtain generically comparable results, a 'standard' WWTP effluent quality was defined that meets the Dutch legal effluent quality standards (Table 1) (Shang et al 2011). A sensitivity analysis was conducted at the end of the study to reveal the impact of possible effluent quality fluctuations (+20%) on the measured performance criteria.…”

“…This combination of unit operations has been applied in various full scale WWTP effluent reclamation processes (Van Houtte & Verbauwhede 2013;Hamoda et al 2015). Instead of UF, microfiltration (MF) membranes have been applied for wastewater reclamation in the Netherlands (Shang et al 2011) but UF has distinct advantages. First, it gives process designers more flexibility to choose a suitable membrane for a given feed quality as UF pore sizes have a wider range between 0.1 and 0.001 μm (Rao 2013).…”

“…Membrane-based technologies have attracted special attention because membranes act as a physical barrier for a wide range of contaminants including contaminants of emerging concerns (CECs) (Fatta-Kassinos et al 2016). Especially, ultrafiltration (UF) and reverse osmosis (RO) have been successfully applied in full scale WWTP effluent reclamation processes (Shang et al 2011;Helmecke et al 2020). Another advantage of membrane processes is that they can flexibly be scaled up with different unit operations and membrane types to add treatment capacity if necessary (Quist-Jensen et al 2015).…”

“…Another advantage of membrane processes is that they can flexibly be scaled up with different unit operations and membrane types to add treatment capacity if necessary (Quist-Jensen et al 2015). Various full-scale studies have demonstrated that membrane-based advanced treatment processes (MATP) can be designed to reclaim WWTP effluents for all three water usage types: (i) (in)direct potable reuse for domestic consumption (Ortuño et al 2012;Chalmers & Patel 2013;Van Houtte & Verbauwhede 2013), (ii) demineralised process water for industrial reuse (Majamaa et al 2010;Shang et al 2011) and (iii) irrigation water for agricultural reuse (Hamoda et al 2015).…”