There is increasing usage of reverse osmosis (RO) membrane treatment for the production of industrial boiler feed water. RO water treatment removes the bulk of a feed water's contaminants and produces a boiler feed water of sufficient quality for relatively low pressure boilers. For high pressure boilers, RO units are typically installed upstream of ion exchange units.RO units require an effective pretreatment system to prevent or minimize problems which may negatively affect performance. The three main problems are scaling, fouling, and chemical attack of the membrane.This paper presents twelve tools which may be used to troubleshoot membrane problems. The twelve tools are: (1) Instrumentation readings; (2) Monitoring software and performance graphs; (3) Cartridge filter change-out data; (4) Silt Density Index (SDI) measurements; (5) Visual inspections; (6) Profiling; (7) Probing; (8) Chemical cleaning; (9) Design software; (10) Bacterial counts; (11) Water analysis; (12) Element autopsy.
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