The Role of Aquifer Media in Improving the Quality of Seawater Feed to Desalination Plants

F. Sola, A. Vallejos (), J. López-Geta and A. Pulido-Bosch

Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA), 2013, vol. 27, issue 5, 1377-1392

Abstract: This study focuses on the role of the aquifer media as a tool to improve the characteristics of seawater used to supply desalination plants, quantifying this improvement from a considerable number of physicochemical parameters. The evolution of both physicochemical and microbiological characteristics through the aquifer media has been determined by comparing the composition of seawater samples taken via direct intake with those taken over the aquifer. The principal improvements are due to the process of filtration. It includes up to a 95 % reduction in turbidity and up to a 50 % reduction in SDI. Other parameters are also notably reduced (TOC is cut on average by 60 %, and DO by 80 %), due to bacterial activity in the aquifer. It is also important to highlight that only a short distance of water flow through the aquifer is needed to achieve this improvement. If it used the seabed as the filter material, it would be necessary a minimum thickness of a few meters due to biological activity involves a significant increase in the TOC. An understanding of the filtration processes occurring within the aquifer provides a natural analogue on which future improvements in artificial pre-treatment can be based. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013

Keywords: Beach well; Seawater intake; Filtration processes; Aquifer matrix (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11269-012-0243-6 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:waterr:v:27:y:2013:i:5:p:1377-1392

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11269

DOI: 10.1007/s11269-012-0243-6

Access Statistics for this article

Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA) is currently edited by G. Tsakiris

More articles in Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA) from Springer, European Water Resources Association (EWRA)
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().