Membranes as pretreatment to desalination in wastewater reuse: operating experience in the municipal and industrial sectors

Water shortage problems are becoming more widespread and are encouraging us ers to treat difficult waters and to value the reuse of wastewater. Membran e processes such as reverse osmosis (RO) have been used to treat such water s as well as sea water (SWRO). The applications, particularly for wastewate r, have been limited due to the sensitivity of RO membranes to fouling and the inefficiency of the conventional pretreatment process technologies used . This paper reviews the benefits of wastewater reuse for industrial and mu nicipal applications. It demonstrates how continuous microfiltration (CW) p retreatment to RO can reduce capital and operating costs of RO systems, imp rove their efficiency and enable reliable operation on a wider variety of w ater sources. This information is supported by operational data from a numb er of CMF RO installations worldwide on difficult to treat feed waters.