The desalination of seawater by reverse osmosis has become well accepted throughout the world.The world may be running low on good quality brackish water but it will always have seawaterto produce drinking water, irrigation water, and water for our industries. If not already, goodquality water needs to be considered by people and governments that it is a precious resource andnot a commodity. The cost to produce seawater has historically been more expensive thanpurifying brackish water sources, in part to the unavoidable and significant impact that osmoticpressure has on RO feed pump energy requirements. Energy is a large cost factor and today isonly 25-30% of what it was in the 1970’s due to improvements in SWRO membranes, pumps,energy recovery devices, and system designs. However, we are approaching the point ofdiminishing return to meet the practical lower limits of energy savings with today’s technologies.This paper will focus on a discussion of the methods of reducing energies in SWRO systemsfollowed by a discussion of present and future improvements that have been made in SWROmembrane elements for energy reduction.
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