RO applied to seawater: high feed salinity, single-pass configuration, and a recovery limited by osmotic pressure and scaling rather than by membrane rejection.
- Active
- Available
Reverse Osmosis RO
The core desalination technology of the platform: a semi-permeable membrane driven by pressure, with recovery, salt rejection, energy and concentrate all derived by real engines.
Overview
The core desalination technology of the platform: a semi-permeable membrane driven by pressure, with recovery, salt rejection, energy and concentrate all derived by real engines.
How it works
Separation mechanism and feed window. Requires controlled feed. Membranes are damaged by particulates, biofouling, scaling and excessive recovery, so pretreatment is a precondition rather than an option.
What the process produces. A permeate at a stated salt rejection. Product TDS is derived from feed TDS and rejection, or taken from your stated value.
Energy. High-pressure pumping. Specific energy consumption is the main operating cost and is calculated from permeate flow, pressure and pump efficiency.
Process sequence
Where this technology normally sits in a treatment train. The steps either side of it are documented in the Library as separate entries.
- Intake
- Pretreatment
- Antiscalant dosing
- High-pressure pump
- RO stage
- Post-treatment
- Product storage
Typical applications
- Seawater desalination (SWRO)
- Brackish water reuse and groundwater desalination (BWRO)
- Industrial process water production
Main equipment
- Membrane elements and pressure vessels
- High-pressure pump
- Energy-recovery device
- Pre-treatment and dosing skid
- Post-treatment and product storage
Key design parameters
The parameters an engineer actually sets, and why each one drives the design. EngiMetric does not assume any of them.
| Parameter | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Recovery | Primary split between product and concentrate, and the main scaling constraint. |
| Salt rejection | Sets permeate TDS for a given feed. |
| Feed pressure | Must exceed osmotic pressure plus losses; sets energy. |
| Design flux | With permeate flow, sets membrane area and element count. |
| Concentrate TDS | Derived by salt conservation and checked against saturation limits. |
Advantages
- Mature, energy-efficient and widely standardised.
- Fully traceable from feed basis to product, concentrate, energy and equipment.
- Conservative treatment is the design variable, so recovery can be traded against energy.
Limitations
- Membrane replacement is a recurring cost.
- Feed chemistry must be controlled or the membranes will foul or scale.
- Concentrate disposal or use is a real cost and constraint, not a by-product.
Engineering considerations
- Concentrate TDS is derived by salt conservation and always flagged for verification against solubility data.
- A recovered product flow below the stated target is visible in the design basis margin rather than hidden.
- Energy depends on the pressure actually needed, which depends on feed salinity, temperature and recovery.
Status and EngiMetric support
Industry maturity and commercial status describe the technology itself. EngiMetric support and quantitative modeling describe what this platform does with it — and those two are read from the engineering registry at build time, so they cannot drift from the code.
- Engineering maturity
- Mature How established the technology is in the industry. Not an EngiMetric claim.
- Commercial status
- Established Where the technology sits in the market. Not an EngiMetric claim.
- EngiMetric support
- Active Derived from the execution registry: ro is registered as supported.
- Design engine
- Yes Whether the Plant Designer can carry this as a configured process step.
- Quantitative modeling
- Available Derived: 10 of 12 registered capabilities run a deterministic engine.
What EngiMetric computes
These capabilities are registered in the EngiMetric execution registry. Each one runs a deterministic engine, so every result is reproducible from the inputs you supply.
- RO permeate TDS calculatePermeateTds
- RO salt rejection calculateSaltRejection
- RO salt passage calculateSaltPassage
- RO water balance verifyFlowBalance
- RO concentrate flow calculateConcentrateFlow
- RO osmotic pressure calculateRoOsmoticPressure
- RO energy and specific power calculateRoEnergy
- RO concentration factor calculateConcentrationFactor
- RO scaling risk analyzeScalingRisk
- RO recovery calculateRoRecovery
Related tools
Every tool below exists and is live. EngiMetric does not duplicate a formula here — the calculation lives in the tool, and this page links to it.
- RO Recovery Calculator Permeate and concentrate split from recovery.
- RO Mass Balance Calculator Full water and salt balance across the stage.
- RO Energy & Specific Power Calculator Hydraulic power, motor power and specific energy consumption.
- RO Osmotic Pressure Calculator Osmotic pressure from feed concentration and temperature.
- RO Membrane & Vessel Element Count Calculator Membrane area, element and vessel count from permeate flow and flux.
- RO Scaling Risk & Pretreatment Analysis LSI and saturation indices for scaling screening.
- RO Performance & Troubleshooting Analyzer Flux normalisation and diagnostics against a reference condition.
Design this as a plant
The primary process of the Plant Designer. The RO stage, its high-pressure pump and the pre- and post-treatment around it are all configured steps in one ordered train.
Verified against the authoritative treatment model, which configures:
ro-stage
Sources and references
- Design flux and element area — Membrane supplier datasheet; entered by the engineer.
- Saturation indices — Computed by the EngiMetric scaling-risk engine from stated chemistry.
EngiMetric does not publish a bibliography of external literature for catalogued technologies. Where a figure is required, it is entered by the engineer from a datasheet or a published reference, and it is labelled as an input.