Aruba’s desalination’s knowledge and experience: conquering the sea toward desalination’s sustainability.
The semi-arid island of Aruba has earned throughout its desalination history an excellent reputation for the efficient com-mercial application of the costly seawater desalination technology. Reliable drinking water production and distribution is of imminent importance for the population, the island economy, industry, and in particular, for the tourism industry. But, seawater desalination is very susceptible to many operational problems hampering stable and efficient water production. The primary operational problems are excessive foaming, biofouling, scaling and corrosion. In Aruba, due to sub-optimal conditioning of the drinking water, iron and copper corrosion in the distribution system has caused diminished water quality and leakages due to perforations of pipes in the distribution system. In the 1990’s, following an intensive scientific research a Continuous Desalination Efficiency Improvement Process was developed to eliminate the aforementioned operational problems. This paper outlines the different state of the art chemical additives developed and applied in collaboration with the chemical supplier to achieve sustainable desalination. The application of the chemical additives resulted in practically 100% availability of the thermal desalination units and increased efficiency with 7% for both thermal and membrane pro-duction units. The iron concentration of the drinking water has been reduced to about 0.01 ppm, which is far less than the World Health Organization’s target of 0.3 ppm for drinking water. Due to the optimal condition of the drinking water and the resulting reduction in corrosion and leakages, the Non-Revenue Water amounted to 2.6-4.7 percent versus 15-65 percent in the neighboring Islands in the Caribbean region. The different technical solutions discussed in this paper may be use-ful for many seawater desalination companies; especially in Small Island Developing States, to effectively solve ongoing operational problems and move toward sustainable operation.
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Journal Contribution biblioteca |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
2018
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| Subjects: | Sea water desalination, Marine biofouling, Foaming, Scaling, Desalination Sustainability, |
| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/1834/42301 |
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