Industrial Effluent Recycling Plant in India Saves Thousands
The use of reconditioned RO membrane elements allowed an Indian effluent recycling plant to realize savings of over $300,000 per year.
Effluent Plant Details
An Indian textile (dye) company draws its water from a river source and operates a minimum liquid discharge effluent recycling plant. The total plant water requirements are more than 4 MGD. Present effluent recycling efforts have reduced the overall water footprint of the plant to the point where 90% of the process water is recycled and reused, resulting in makeup water being limited to 10%. Major components of the treatment plant include biological aeration, clarification, sand filtration, reverse osmosis, and mechanical vapor recompression salt recovery.
Challenge
The rigors of the salt and dye removal process produced a situation where the reverse osmosis membranes experienced heavy fouling. This led to a significant reduction in flux thereby reducing the life-cycle of the membranes to less than one year. Consequently, the plant’s membrane consumption rate was six to eight times higher than that of a typical municipal wastewater application. This high membrane consumption rate resulted in a situation where the company was experiencing prohibitively expensive operation costs.
Solution
Our Surplus Division supplied the plant with reconditioned surplus reverse osmosis membrane elements. The cost of each reconditioned element was 60% less than the cost of a comparable new membrane element. (Here you can view our current inventory of surplus seawater membranes and brackish membranes.)
Result
After one year of service, there was no material difference in either the performance or the useful life of the reconditioned membranes when compared to the prior usage of new elements. More importantly, the cost savings to the company was over $300,000 per year.
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Read about members of the WaterSurplus team joining the US International Water Technology Business Delegation to India.
