BEACHWELL SEAWATER INTAKE AS FEED FOR AN RO DESALTING SYSTEM

The beachwell seawater intake system has been identified as a promisin g technique to replace conventional surface seawater pretreatment syst ems in the reverse osmosis (RO) desalination process. Conventional pre treatment is costly, space-consuming and the filtrate quality and quan tity are usually not steady. In this paper the results of a study to i nvestigate the technical and economic feasibility of feeding RO desali nation systems with naturally filtered seawater from a beachwell intak e are outlined. Two experimental seawater RO systems fitted with ident ical hollow fine-fiber membranes were operated simultaneously. One of the systems was fed with water derived from a beachwell and the other fed with conventionally pretreated surface seawater. Analysis of the d ata collected through one complete calendar year demonstrated the supe riority of the beachwell feed water over the conventionally pretreated water in terms of quality and suitability as feed for RO systems. A t echno-economic study proved that beachwell intake is more economical i n terms of capital and running costs than the conventional system as a pretreatment technique for the seawater reverse osmosis (SWRO) desali nation process.