Enhancing remineralization in seawater desalination: Optimizing reagent injection for improved water quality at AL HOCEIMA plant

Abstract

The water quality produced by reverse osmosis is aggressive and highly demineralized, making it unsuitable for direct use and consumption as a source of drinking water. For this reason, the remineralization stage plays a crucial role in the treatment of desalinated water, and its improvement will be necessary to solve the problem of the aggressiveness of the water treated at the AL HOCEIMA seawater desalination plant. This improvement involves injecting three reagents into the limewater saturator, to obtain lime water that ensures the turbidity of the treated water is less than or equal to 1NTU, TAC, equal to 8°F. These reagents are polyelectrolyte, ferric chloride, and sodium silicate. The results show that adding polyelectrolyte and ferric chloride reduces turbidity to an acceptable level for the plant. However, it should be noted that ferric chloride has significant effects on other treated water parameters. These findings underscore the importance of optimizing remineralization processes to meet water quality standards effectively.