Rotec's Flow Reversal technology improves recovery for reverse osmosis without additional energy

November 15, 2018 | Case Study

Reverse osmosis (RO) normally runs at recovery close to 50% for seawater desalination and up to 75% for brackish water applications, creating excess brines that require disposal. Improving recovery has been a key challenge to RO's economic viability, especially at inland locations deficient in source water supplies and disposal capacities. Israeli startup Rotec aims to address the issue using Flow Reversal (FR), a proprietary approach that rotates membrane vessels before scale forms and periodically reverses the direction of feed streams in the last set of vessels to inhibit the buildup of scale.