Assessment of the Intake and the Pretreatment Design in Existing Seawater Reverse Osmosis (SWRO) Plants by Hasse Diagram Technique (HDT) |
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| Authors: | Amos Bick Rainer Bruggemann Gideon Oron |
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| Institution: | 1. Department of Industrial Engineering and Management, Jerusalem College of Technology, Jerusalem, Israel;2. Department of Chemical Engineering, Shenkar College of Engineering and Design, Ramat Gan, Israel;3. Leibniz‐Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries, Berlin, Germany;4. The Unit of Environmental Engineering, Faculty of Engineering Science, Ben‐Gurion University of the Negev, Beer Sheva, Israel;5. Environment Water Resources, J. Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research, Ben‐Gurion University of the Negev, Kiryat Sde Boker, Israel |
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| Abstract: | Seawater desalination is a rising technology intended to overcome water scarcity and is increasingly being used for the production of drinking water. A good quality pretreatment process is prominent to the successful operation of a Seawater Reverse Osmosis (SWRO) plant. The tasks of the intake and the pretreatment modules are to prevent fouling and to extend the lifetime of the reverse osmosis membranes. To practice the method of assessment design, 19 seawater plants with 11 different design strategies have been evaluated. The assessed strategies consist of: (i) Intake treatment, (ii) pretreatment aid (coagulation, flocculation, clarification), and (iii) pretreatment unit. Every possible combination of the design elements has been evaluated by a set of 15 attributes. The comparative evaluation has been conducted by Hasse diagram technique (HDT) using PyHasse software. The result of the HDT application includes 7 favorable incomparable design strategies. In order to solve the incomparability, the Condorcet–Kemeny–Young–Levenglick (C–K–Y–L) ranking procedure was additionally used and rendered the optimal design that is based on subsurface intake and membrane (ultrafiltration) pretreatment facilities. According to the results, both mathematical methods, i.e., the HDT in combination with the C–K–Y–L, procedure can be powerful and helpful tools to assist decisions concerning design strategies. |
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| Keywords: | Hasse diagram technique Partial order theory Reverse osmosis Seawater desalination Treatment selection |
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