Membrane Pretreatment Application Types and Considerations with Seawater Reverse Osmosis

This paper addresses pretreatment options for sea water reverse osmosis and provides an understanding of the design issues and comparative effects of the membrane pretreatment process. Selected seawater desalination sites from the Middle East, Australia, Dubai, and the United States are compared; and although the choices among various membrane pretreatment configurations appear simple, the designer must pay significant consideration to the suspended solids, organics, and biomass content of the feedwater prior to selecting a preferred configuration.