More drinking water. No new intake. No more brine-disposal capacity.
The challenge
An operating seawater desalination plant needed to increase drinking-water production, but it could not drill a new beach well or increase flow to its brine-disposal wells.
The solution
Rick’s team designed, installed, and commissioned an osmotically assisted reverse osmosis (OARO) system to recover additional water from the plant’s reverse-osmosis brine.
The retrofit increased freshwater recovery without additional source-water intake and reduced the flow sent to brine disposal.
The result
The 2,400 m³/day (0.6 MGD) system operates at 50% recovery and less than 80 bar (1,150 psi), producing drinking-quality water while concentrating the residual brine to 120 g/L total dissolved solids (TDS).
Status: Rick Stover’s prior professional experience. Commissioned system; figures are reported operating results. The process diagram is conceptual. The control-panel photos show the installed OARO retrofit; the pump and pressure-vessel photos are representative.
