Desalination processes for drinking water are becoming increasingly important in the face of a growing global shortage of good quality water. This MSc thesis discusses a commercial system to produce drinking water using RO from high ionic content sources and presents the main elements. In the experimental work we found that as the ionic content of the feed water increases, the parameters of the produced drinking water deteriorate in absolute terms. At a pressure of 30 bar, the conductivity of the produced water increases from 12 μS/cm to 4300 μS/cm when the input salinity was varied between 0 g/l and 35 g/l. The efficiency of the system decreases with increasing input salinity, being 33.3% at 30 bar and 0 g/l salinity and 1.3% at 35 g/l salinity. The minimum electricity consumption is at 65 bar and was 8.16 kWh/m3 at 35 g/l salinity, while the permeate quality was best at 55 bar. Based on the results of the plant noise measurements, suggestions have been made to reduce noise generation. We expect that with such approaches it will be possible in the future to use mobile systems for self-drinking water treatment close to human habitation and at night, and to reduce energy consumption by a proper procedure for testing the operation of the system with variation of inlet salinity and process pressure.
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