Aproveitamento de membranas de osmose inversa descartadas da indústria para o reuso da purga de torres de resfriamento

AUTOR(ES)
FONTE

IBICT - Instituto Brasileiro de Informação em Ciência e Tecnologia

DATA DE PUBLICAÇÃO

2012

RESUMO

Reverse osmosis plants use new membranes to produce demineralized water. After a period of three to five years, the membranes are replaced by news ones due to levels of treatment which are not suitable for production of water with the desired characteristics. This process generates a lot of rejected modules causing an environmental problem. The present work aims to study the use of reverse osmosis membranes disposed from demineralization water systems for the reuse in treatment of purge stream of a cooling tower. The permeate produced will be used as make- up water for the same tower in one petrochemical company. For this, chemical cleaning, preservation of membranes and dosages of chemicals were evaluated in tests involving a pilot system. One dry module (no storage), one module stored with biocide solution and one module installed in the pilot plant immediately were tested. Moreover, the influence of conservation in the initial permeate flux were observed. The dried membrane module had the lowest initial permeate flux, followed by the membrane module which was kept with a biocide solution. The higher initial permeate flux was obtained with the module collected at the time of disposal and immediately installed in the pilot system. The use of citric acid, sodium hydroxide and sodium bisulfate in chemical cleaning to remove fouling and recovery the permeate flux was efficient. A further result was that the pre-treatment present in the pilot plant was ineffective to treat feed water system. This compromises the life time of membranes and increases the frequency of chemical cleanings. Furthermore the destructive autopsy indicated the formation of fouling with high concentrations of silica and organic matter. Laboratory tests indicated that the produced permeate has higher quality than clarified water produced by the company and which is currently used as make- up water for the cooling tower. As a result it can be assumed that the reuse of membranes disposed at other stages of the same process can not only help to reduce the generation of effluents and waste, but also it can help to decrease the amount of water collected in industrial processes.

ASSUNTO(S)

membranas (tecnologia) osmose reversa reúso da água

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