Comparative seawater RO pretreatment evaluation using bench- and pilot-scale testing

As the world continues to focus on finding new sources of drinking water, increasing attention has been paid to the reverse osmosis (RO) process and, in particular, seawater RO (SWRO). In this article the authors discuss how proper pretreatment of seawater before the RO process can have a significant positive impact on the effectiveness of the SWRO process as a whole. This is the first study to conduct a side-by-side comparison of membrane and conventional pretreatment for SWRO. Utility managers will benefit from the descriptions of the methodologies for testing and the performance comparisons of different pretreatment strategies. This information will become increasingly valuable as more attention is focused on seawater as a possible alternate water supply.