The production of both fresh water and waste streams are progressively increasing over the years due to ongoing population growth coupled with high levels of increase in water consumption. The ongoing growth of human activities, such as industry, recreation, and agriculture, are significantly contributing to the increase in both water demand and severity of degradation of natural water resources. The majority of the industrial wastewaters have a significant impact on the environment; some of which may pose a number of threats to human health and the surrounding environment. Thus, discharge of such waste streams into a surface water and/or groundwater presents a major source of water pollution in many countries. Therefore, these waste streams must be disposed of in an environmentally acceptable manner. The primary concern of the PhD thesis is to seek the most feasible and applicable freezing desalination technologies that are potentially capable to concentrate the dissolved ionic content of the liquid streams, especially for those causing severe pollution problems. Therefore, various forms of melt crystallisation processes, namely; agitated and static crystallisation processes, ice maker machines, a Sulzer falling film crystallisation process, the Sulzer suspension crystallisation process, and the Sulzer static crystallisation process, were experimentally used and investigated. The experimental investigations were carried out on the laboratory bench scale and/or straightforward pilot plant by using aqueous solutions of sodium chloride and/or process brines as feed samples. The study was focused on a number of important parameters influencing the separation performance of the investigated treatment systems. In general, the resulting experimental data for each innovative process were highly encouraging in minimising the volume of the waste stream, and substantially increasing the amount of product water. The obtained product water was ready for immediate use either as drinking water or as a saline water of near brackish water or seawater qualities. Also, relationships between the influences and the separation performance, in terms of salt rejection and water recovery ratios, were explored and determined for the investigated technologies. Based on the experimental results, the Sulzer melt crystallisation processes were scaled up and were combined into a commercial reverse osmosis membrane desalination plant. As a result, three novel treatment option configurations were proposed for minimising the waste stream, whilst increasing the production rate of drinking water and/or preserving a substantial amount of natural water resource from the RO plant's exploitation.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:631747 |
| Date | January 2012 |
| Creators | Ahmad, Mansour M. M. |
| Publisher | Swansea University |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa42635 |
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