Water Management and Reverse Osmosis (RO) Based Desalination for an Industrial Plant

This paper is a case study that discusses a Middle Eastern Seawater RO (SWRO) system that has multiple environmental challenges. The solution was to draw some of the feed seawater before being mixed with recycle streams and process through one of the trains in the RO system. By doing so, a portion of the feed seawater was isolated for producing potable water. The wastewater from the potable system including gray water and sanitary wastewater was treated with a separate sanitary wastewater treatment system based on activated sludge and clarifier. The effluent from the sanitary treatment was not recycled to the RO and used for on-site irrigation. Overall, this plant encountered unique set of requirements and challenges which are also different from nearby oil and gas facilities and demonstrated that even in a region with scarce water supply, industrial requirement for water supply and regulatory requirement for water treatment and disposal could be satisfied using an innovative scheme of SWRO and water recycle.