Case study · Industrial Manufacturing & Environmental · 2008
RO-reject brine concentration at full industrial scale
Petro Sep delivered a full-scale AQUA-SEP® brine concentration plant in China, treating reverse-osmosis reject and high-TDS industrial wastewater past the practical limits of conventional pressure-driven membranes.
- Industry
- Industrial Manufacturing & Environmental
- Location
- China
- Year
- 2008
- Technology deployed
- VMD
Outcomes
The numbers that mattered.
- Plant type
- Full-scale
- Brine concentration on RO reject and high-TDS feeds.
- RO reject TDS handled
- Up to 25%+
- Far beyond RO's 6 to 8 percent practical limit.
01
Why RO reject needs an AQUA-SEP tail
Reverse osmosis recovers 35 to 45 percent of a typical industrial feed before the reject stream hits a TDS ceiling (roughly 6 to 8 percent) where membrane fouling and osmotic backpressure stop further recovery. The reject is typically too dirty for direct discharge and too dilute for crystallization. AQUA-SEP®, operating on a vacuum membrane distillation principle, runs well past 20 percent TDS. Petro Sep's RO material puts RO plus AQUA-SEP® at up to about 95 percent recovery on the original feed in general, with crystallization (where required) reduced to a much smaller, more economic stage.
02
Build and deployment
The China deployments are among the earliest large-scale demonstrations of AQUA-SEP® on high-TDS industrial feeds.
03
Outcomes
Petro Sep's 2024 company profile records the full-scale membrane skids installation for RO reject water treatment and brine concentration in 2008, followed by membrane skid testing on industrial waste and brine concentration in 2014.
Industry
More on Industrial Manufacturing & Environmental.
Process equipment, packaged plants, and patented recovery for manufacturing, water reuse, and emissions control.
Explore industry
Technology
How Vacuum Membrane Distillation works.
High-recovery treatment for high-salinity and complex feeds where reverse osmosis cannot go.
Specs and applications
Have a similar feed
we should look at?
Send us a sample and a sentence about your goal. We will tell you whether membrane separation fits and what we would do at each of the five steps.