International Islamic UniversityMalaysia

Many states in India are facing a severe problem of groundwater salinity in coastal and inland regions, caused due to natural and anthropological reasons. Experiments were conducted using low concentration salt (NaCl) solutions of known concentration and with diluted sea water to simulate the actual ground water conditions under the effect of sea water intrusion / natural aggravated salinity condition. The experiments were conducted on the existing RO system of sea water desalination with a product capacity of about 5m3/day. The system was run under different operating conditions of temperature, pressure and feed water concentration to evaluate the performance of the two membranes (Hydranautics and Koch), connected in parallel to the feed water system. Flow rates and concentrations of product and reject waters were closely monitored during the experiment. Product Recovery (PR) is found to increase with feed water temperature and pressure, but decrease with increasing feed water concentration. Salt Passage (SP) increases with feed water temperature and concentration, but decreases with increasing feed water pressure. Although, Hydranautics membrane and Koch membrane have different physical configurations, both react similarly, though with slightly different degrees, to the changes in experimental conditions. Notably different is their respective Product Recovery and Salt Passage, which can be qualified by the different morphological characteristics of the two membranes