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The Governor of Texas created an initiative for the evaluation of the feasibility ofseawater desalination to provide additional water supply. Under this initiative, threeprojects were created that were administered by the Texas Water Development Board(TWDB). The City of Corpus Christi secured a grant for one of the three projects, a"Large Scale Desalination Demonstration Project Feasibility Study".The required product water flow-rate of the project was 25-mgd. However, in order toproduce 25-mgd of finished water, a larger portion of raw water is required to accountfor waste streams for the pretreatment and the reverse osmosis system, itself. While there were many facets to the investigation, a major focus was to identifypotential treatment methods to produce potable water for the region. Therefore, anevaluation of source water issues and treatment alternatives, as well as preparation ofdesign criteria, plant and space requirements, and estimated capital and operations andmaintenance costs for a conceptual desalination facility was performed.Several areas were identified for potential seawater supply, including several industrialsites, a power plant intake, and other areas along the coast. Challenges were realizeddue to hypersaline conditions in many areas, which can increase the cost of potablewater production. Therefore, a thorough review of source water options as well as thepotential for groundwater blending was examined. The variation in source waters andblending impacted design criteria such as salinity, temperature, and pretreatmentrequirements.The proposed RO system consists of two passes. In the second pass, the brine orconcentrate in the first stage feeds the second stage. The concentrate quality from the second stage is better than the raw feed quality, so it is directed back to the feed,upstream of the RO feed pump. This two-pass configuration uses the least amount ofenergy while projecting water quality that was consistently below the establishedmaximum water quality limits at temperatures ranging from 10 to 30 degrees Celsius. This paper provides a brief background on the project, looks at project goals, reviewsraw water quality and finished water quality goals, and looks at the reverse osmosisdesalination design criteria to meet project objectives. Includes 3 references, table, figures.

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Edition: Vol. - No. Published: 03/01/2005 Number of Pages: 19 File Size: 1 file , 670 KB