SEAWATER REVERSE-OSMOSIS - A STUDY IN USE

In the last decade seawater reverse osmosis (RO) has made immense strides as a technology and in acceptance in the marketplace. It has been estimated that at the start of the eighties, the market share for RO was about 23% with multi-stage flash distillation (MSF), the dominant thermal process, having a two thirds share. By 1989 the situation had completely changed. RO was now the major contributor to desalination with 85% share and MSF was reduced to 3%. Economics, energy consumption and technology were the cause of this dramatic reversal of roles. Within RO there are essentially two modular configurations used to desalinate the seawater--hollow fine fiber (HFF) permeators and spiral wound (SW) cartridges. Almost from the beginning HFF permeators have been the major technology. Today about 70% of the identified world-wide installations use HFF permeators. This paper attempts to define why the HFF configuration is the device of choice for desalting seawater.