Desempenho de um sistema híbrido de membranas para diferentes gradientes de concentrações de sais dissolvidos nas águas de alimentação sob pressão constante

Abstract

Water is a very important natural resource for the life of all species inhabiting the earth. However, it is being affected due to climate change, low quality, and quantity. The present work aims to evaluate the performance of a hybrid system of ultrafiltration/reverse osmosis membranes, for the treatment of brackish waters, in which the concentrate generated in each experiment serves as the feed for subsequent experiments. The experiments for different concentrations of salts in the hybrid system were conducted at the Desalination Technology Testing Center (CTTD) of the Ministry of Science, Technology, and Innovation (MCTI) housed within LABDES/UFCG, with mass transfer processes, in the design of water treatments with technology involving polymeric membranes, combined with the learning of water characterization processes, through physical-chemical and bacteriological analyses, and operating pressure. The operating pressure used in the experiments was 7.12 kgf/cm², simulated by Winflows 4.03, under the conditions of water quality feeding experiment 01. It was observed that the cost of water produced by the hybrid membrane system depended on the level of concentration of dissolved salts in the feed water. Experiment 01, which has a TDS feed of 1,775.62 mg/L, was the experiment with the highest system efficiency and the lowest production cost, with a treated water recovery rate of 24.86% and a production cost of 2.77 R$/m³.