DESALINATION EQUIPMENT MEMBRANES REVERSE OSMOSIS

Download Full Article

Abstract

There is a widespread confusion between the plant availability and the plant reliability. The latter relates to the procured equipment failure rate, and is the negotiation point of the project package. Whereas, the first is not as it depends on the repair capabilities of the plant personnel and the adopted preventive maintenance plan (PMP). It necessarily includes such time-consuming procedures as clean-in-place (CIP) cleaning, membrane reshuffling and replacement, and the seawater intake pipe pigging. Quantitatively, treatment system availability is always less than reliability. Depending on the plant design, the latter varies within 97.5% to 99.5%. Availability below 95% is not rare. So only the plant reliability defined as (1 ﾖ repair_time*capacity_drop/8,760)*100% is subject to the performance guarantee. When a plant is reliable, maintenance costs decrease, unplanned outages and incidents are few and far between, the cost of production goes down, and profits increase. Plant reliability design requires a comprehensive system approach and is a compound result of the following factors: equipment design reliability, spinning reserve capacities, backup capacities, and plant structural reliability. Requirements for more reliable design and construction are set out in the equipment specification. In practice, the equipment is considered reliable if it has enough similar application references, good operating records, and proven sufficient service life.

Log in or Subscribe to Access the Full Article

To read or download full-length articles you need a subscription to Ultrapure. Please log in or subscribe below.