Industrial Ro Plant

Product Details

The semi-permeable membranes including the spiral wound module of RO process have been used to treat wastewater of a number of industries including textile, dairy, tannery, and pharmaceutical industries to remove several pollutants such as copper, nitrate, sulphate and acrylonitrile (Obotey Ezugbe, and Rathilal, 2020). Phenol, which is highly toxic, can be found in the wastewater of several industrial practices (Magdy et al., 2021). Several researchers tested the feasibility of spiral wound RO process for the removal of phenol from wastewater (Srinivasan et al., 2010; Sundaramoorthy et al., 2011; Al-Obaidi et al., 2017a; Al-Huwaidi et al., 2021). For instance, Al-Obaidi et al. (2017a) evaluated the removal of phenol from synthesised wastewater from varying the operating conditions of the spiral wound RO process. The investigated operating parameters include the inlet phenol concentration, feed pressure and feed flowrate. This simulation confirmed the necessity of utilising an optimum feed concentration of phenol to obtain the highest phenol rejection. However, to the best knowledge of the authors, the investigation of membrane design parameters of spiral wound module including membrane length, width and feed spacer channel and consequent optimal operating conditions of temperature, pressure and concentration have yet to be concurrently appraised. This study attempts to resolve this gap by developing a simulation model for the removal of phenol from wastewater using a spiral wound RO module. Particular attention will be paid to the careful selection of optimal operating conditions which will yield an improved removal of pollutant (phenol) from wastewater. 2. RO process modelling This section presents assumptions and the methodology process for modelling elements of the RO process. This model selected is that developed by Al-Obaidi et al. (2017b) as described below. 2.1. Assumptions The following assumptions were made to aid in the development of the process model: • The Spiegler-Kedem model's validity. • Darcy's law is valid when the friction parameter is used to describe the pressure drop. • At the permeate side, a constant pressure of 1 atm is assumed. • There is minimal curvature of the flat membrane sheet. • The channel of permeate assumes a constant concentration of solute, and the average value is calculated amounting to that of the solution concentration inlets and outlets. • For one-dimensional transport, the model is studied • For the computation, the fundamental assumption is that the process is isothermal.   2.2. Model equations Al-Obaidi et al. (2017b) developed a one-dimensional model based on the definition of the molar solvent and volumetric solvent fluxes JW(x) and Js(x). The following equations depict the x-axis fluxes across any point of t