October
4
There are a lot uses of water in industry, basically not only in industry but everywhere on the earth, but why we have chosen the word industry here because many industries can utilize the used water that also needs treatment to render it fit for re-use. Actually, Water in its demineralized form is only used in industries like pharmaceuticals, nuclear plants paper creation, and many manufacturing businesses, for that purpose these industries use the reverse osmosis plants, which is a manufacturing plant where reverse osmosis takes place.
Now what is reverse osmosis, it is a water purification technology in which a semipermeable membrane is used to remove the toxic and unhealthy particle from water, at the bottom it is the process which industries use to clean water, whether for their own applications or for converting brackish water, to clean up wastewater or to recover salt from industrial water. RO works by reversing the technology of osmosis which is a natural tendency of water to flow through the membrane from lower to a higher concentration. RO system uses cross-filtration, where the solution crosses the filter with two outlets: the filtered water goes one way and the contaminated water goes another way. To avoid the buildup of contaminants, cross-flow filtration allows water to sweep away contaminant buildup and enough turbulence to keep the membrane surface clean. In large scale industries, RO Plants are used to remove particularly ions and molecules to meet tough quality specification of an individual industrial process. Minerals are removed from water in industries from restraining it from the damage of corrosion, scaling and microbial activities. Apart from it, Industrial RO Plant also need to install in some industries for raw water treatment, cooling tower water treatment, wastewater treatment, food and beverage processing, cosmetic and pharmaceuticals production and desalination etc.
Let us understand how it is used in few industries:-
Boiler Feed Water: Industries which are somehow dependent on steam as driving force for a turbine,like product processing industries do well understand the fact that boilers feed water's poor quality can lead to the problem of turbine failure, which can impact production rate and product quality both. Therefore including reverse osmosis system in the boiler feed-water makeup circuit significantly reduces the maintenance cost and enhance the reliability of circuit.
Pharmaceuticals Industries: Up-to-now the production of water for injection was limited to distillation but as per revised USP standards purification process equivalent to distillation like reverse osmosis is also allowed.even pharmaceutical industries need purified water at each step like in manufacturing of medicines and cosmetics.general laboratory analysis like glassware washing and rinsing, buffer preparation and spectrometer all of these requires highly pure water to ensure quality and correct results.
Microelectronics: Microelectronics product specifications need water free of bacteria and organics with specific dissolved solid levels so the first step to maintain the dissolved solid level in water is reverse osmosis.
Food and Beverage Industry: Highly pure water need for food and beverage industry is a mandatory thing like in beer production high quality water is used for proofing process for alcohol beverage production, meat and poultry processing also have high-quality water requirements. RO products can meet all the requirements and can remove the pollutants and microorganisms.Food and beverage processors use high volumes of water both as an ingredient and product and even in their sanitation of plants. Here resulting water is responsibility of reverse osmosis plants.
Desalination: Water is everywhere filled on earth, but it is with high salt content and is not usable for consumption or any industrial use. So reverse osmosis systems can reduce the dissolved solid level of that salty seawater to potable level, and further treatment can make it usable in industries too.
Surface Cleaning: A lot of industries like vehicle, building and aircraft maintenance needs surface cleaning as important practice, if the used in cleaning has hardness and surface are allowed to air dry them it left mineral spots on the surface those spots are because of calcium and magnesium salt present in that potable water. Treatment of that water through RO can remove the minerals that cause spots on the surface.
Raw Water Treatment: Raw water is actually natural water that is available for use in an environment and raw water systems are used for improving product efficiency and process performance for a particular application. Treatment is focused on protecting the equipment from scaling and corrosion damages.
Therefore the necessity of replants in few industries is expedient.
Now what should be there in the industrial water treatment plant. The component of water treatment plants basically depends on specific application, there is always flexibility in the needs of these treatment plants.
Clarifiers: These are necessary for removal of suspended solids by sedimentation. These are designed to receive raw/waste from incoming streams. Clarifiers reduce velocity of water and ensures that it is uniformly distributed in radial manner in all directions and provide maximum time for efficient separation of the settled particle from water
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Lime softener are for reduction of TDS in feed and wastewater. Here the meaning of lime softening is addition of calcium hydroxide to remove the hardness of water or to remove elements like magnesium and calcium from water.
Oil and Water Separator: For this purpose RO plant uses a dissolved air flotation device which separates suspended matter like oil and solid dissolved in water, that is achieved by dissolving air in wastewater under pressure.
Particle filtration: it is used for removal of larger particulates.
Membrane Filtration: It is used for ionic substances, biological contaminants and dissolved undesired particles from water.
Nano filtration for purification of water.
Filter Presses: It is most widely used method for the treatment of sludge produced by wastewater treatment. It can be mechanical under vacuum or high pressure condition which requires more practical types of equipment.
Reactor and Chemical Additive: it is required pH adjustment and precipitation of metals.
Control Panel: this is required for desired level of automation.
Apart from all these peripherals including pumps, tanks, piping, valves and skids are the components of standard RO Plant for an industry.
