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U.S. Department of Energy
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Extension of the evaluation of reverse osmosis for SRC-I wastewater. Final technical report

Technical Report ·
OSTI ID:6844667

Reverse osmosis (R.O.) is an integral part of the zero discharge option for the proposed SRC-I Demonstration Plant. The original laboratory treatability testing program for reverse osmosis failed to demonstrate the technical feasibility of this process, due to problems with membrane fouling and deterioration. In that study (1), a high pressure (800 psi) polyether urea membrane for sea water and a low pressure (400 psi) cellulose diacetate membrane for brackish water failed to maintain reasonable TDS rejection rates during flat cell tests. The problem was particularly severe for the high pressure membrane. At the end of the original study, testing was continued on two additional low pressure membranes. One of these was a cellulose diacetate triacetate blend. The other was a new polyaramid membrane, which had only recently become commercially available. This report documents the results of all of the reverse osmosis laboratory tests. The wastewaters used in this study were effluents from bench scale, two-stage bioreactors, followed by tertiary treatment consisting of coagulation, softening, filtration, and granular activated carbon. The investigative program consisted of both immersion and flat cell tests. The results show tht the SRC-I wastewaters are difficult to treat by reverse osmosis with polyether urea or cellulose acetate membranes, and membrane failure was common. However, the new polyaramid membrane was found to be satisfactory when tested with a dephenolated feed stream. After over 1500 hours of continuous flat cell testing, it exhibited a TDS rejection rate of 95%. Based on these preliminary results, reverse osmosis does appear to be a technically feasible approach to achieve zero discharge, assuming the feed stream is dephenolated.

Research Organization:
Catalytic, Inc., Philadelphia, PA (USA)
DOE Contract Number:
AC05-78OR03054
OSTI ID:
6844667
Report Number(s):
DOE/OR/03054-100; ON: DE84013634
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English