The Bajío, Western and Central regions of Mexico are characterized by having well water with a high concentration of silica (80 – 90 ppm), which limits water recovery in reverse osmosis demineralization processes. This makes it necessary to use physical-chemical processes to increase the percentage of water recovery.
Working together with our brewery client, led us to design a solution to precipitate the silica from the rejection water of the reverse osmosis equipment of the process and thus be able to use it as feed water for a second reverse osmosis, managing to increase by more than 20% water recovery rate, reducing input water consumption and generating savings for its treatment. The project has been successful and currently recovers more than 50,000 m3/year.
CHALLENGE
Maximize water recovery in the process with minimum energy consumption and operating cost.
SOLUTION
To eliminate the high concentration of silica, softening with lime-carbonate and filtration with an ultrafiltration grade tubular membrane was implemented. The theoretical results were obtained with tests using a pilot plant, the actual results were consistent with the calculated ones.
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