IDE Technologies, a provider of desalination and water treatment solutions, has launched its brine desalter technology, MAXH₂O, to cut down brine reject from brackish water desalination plants. The MAXH₂O desalter technology integrates a reverse osmosis (RO) system with an integrated salt precipitation unit to boost brine recovery of brackish water reverse osmosis (BWRO) desalination plants.

The desalter also helps to address other challenges such as scaling from soluble salts, and organic fouling and biofouling, without the requirement of extra chemicals. By increasing the BWRO plants recovery and reducing the amount of rejected brine from the desalination plants, the technology helps to reduce the environmental impact of brine. This technology is claimed to help to boost water recovery in municipal and industrial applications such as mining sites, power stations and cooling towers.

IDE product line head and business development director Tomer Efrat said: “Reaching high recovery for BWRO systems has always been a challenge, which in many cases determined whether a project would be economically viable or not. MAXH₂O is definitely breaking the recovery limits known in the industry today, thus providing many more opportunities for both new installations and retrofitting existing facilities.”

Initial pilots of MAXH₂O technology on both current and new BWRO desalination plants have indicated an increase in brine recovery of up to 98%. Due to the presence of soluble salts such as calcium carbonate, silica and calcium sulfate, BWRO and reuse plants are not able to maximise the potential of the BWRO plant and reaching the RO osmotic pressure limit. The presence of soluble salts is resulting in scale formation in the system and on the RO membranes. Consequently, the recovery of BWRO plant is typically limited to around 80%.

The MAXH₂O desalter technology makes use of a semi-batch RO concept along with an integrated salt precipitating unit to eliminate the recovery limitation caused by the water chemistry. By making use of a semi-batch process, the flow through the membranes in the MAXH₂O desalter is increased, which leads to high cross-flow velocities within the RO membrane feed brine spacer, thereby reducing the risk of scale formation. The brine gets rejected from the RO membranes in each cycle which passes through a fluidized bed crystalliser that slowly eliminates the soluble salts from the system.