LUCENA FILHO, A. B.; LUCENA FILHO, Ailto Balbino de.
Resumo:
The present work has the objective to study and optimize the performance of a
desalination system through reverse osmosis (RO), where the energy for the system comes
from photovoltaics paneis. For that, it was developed in the Laboratory of Desalination of
the Department of Chemical Engineering of theFederalUniversity of Paraíba, a small scale
system composed by 3 RO membranes. The performance of the system was evaluated for
synthetic solutions of sodium chloride (NaCl) of concentration varying for 4.6 to 10,519
mg.L"1 and for applied pressure varying for 3 to 15 kgfcm"2. Through the electric power
supplied to the system and through the variation of the applied pressure to the system, it
was made a set of measurements: electric tension and current, flow, electric conductivity,
pH and output pressure. With the obtained data the following parameters have been
evaluated: electric power, electric conductivity, flow, recovery, consumption of energy,
pH, and cost of dessalinated water. It was observed that the recovery of the system is a
important parameter that depends directly on the concentration of the ionic component in
the feeding solution and consequently on the area of mass transfer of each membrane
element. Finally it was observed that:
- with the decrease of the electric tension, there was decrease of the electric power
requested by the motor and, consequently, decrease of the necessary energy for the process.
- with the increase of the pressure, there was an increase of the electric power requested by
the motor, the consumption of energy decreased, the flow of lhe permeated and the
recovery increased and the electric conductivity of the permeated decreased.
- with the increase of the concentration of the feeding solution, the flow of the permeated
decreased and the consumption of energy and the cost of the dessalinated water increased.
