Fresh water supply is a major concern for many countries because of the lack of sustainable resources. Many countries in low rain areas have difficulty securing their daily fresh water supply, while other countries have consumed most of their freshwater resources, leading to a huge shortage of freshwater. There are many countries with water storage or supply levels below average world levels, and some even have levels that are almost zero. As a result of these serious conditions, many countries desalinate their seawater and/or extract their groundwater. For fresh water supply, desalination is the only solution. Over 18,000 desalination plants around the world produce more than 100,000,000 cubic meters of fresh distilled water per day. Each day, billions of litters of fresh ground water are extracted from underground wells. RO membranes contribute to 70% of seawater desalination and 100% of brackish water desalination. The RO process has been used for water desalination for over 50 years, and many countries are moving toward it.
The excessive depletion of the ground water has turned most underground fresh water into salty water that can’t be used for drinking, agriculture, or industrial purposes. Various salinities were found in the ground water, ranging from low salinity (< 2000 ppm), moderate salinity (< 10,000 ppm) to high salinity (<20,000 ppm). Most Brackish Water RO (BWRO) membranes are designed to work below 5000 ppm, and no commercial Brackish Water RO membranes present in the market can handle brackish up 10,000 ppm.
Furthermore, there are a lot of countries where the seawater salinity is extremely high (> 40,000 ppm) that require a special design of seawater desalination plants. In contrast, the seawater RO membranes (SWRO) can desalinate the seawater up to 32,000 ppm only, so pre-treatment units are crucially required to reduce the salinity of seawater up this level.
As of now, there is no commercial BWRO/SWRO membrane that can handle moderate to high brackish water levels without high energy consumption; MemTeck has developed and patented an innovative, new, unique, novel, and high-performance High Flux -BWRO/Low Energy-SWRO membrane that can handle brackish water from low salinity levels up to 25,000 ppm.