Demineralised water, also known as deionised water, is water that has been purified by removing the dissolved minerals and salts such as sodium and chloride. This can be achieved by using ion exchange resins to exchange dissolved charged impurities, for hydrogen and hydroxyl ions, or reverse osmosis membranes that retain the salts and prevent them passing through into the demineralised water. In high purity applications several stages of demineralisation can be used to obtain the required quality. Companies involved in steam raising applications, utilities and manufacturing industries, have come to rely on Ovivo for convenient, cost effective demineralisation solutions.
Demineralisation can be achieved by a variety of methods and Ovivo provide the following technologies:
Demineralised water is required in a huge range of applications from power generation, petrochemicals, steel/aluminium manufacture, food and beverage, electronics, pharmaceuticals, metal finishing and paper manufacture.
Each of these industries has a specific requirement ranging from softened water (Calcium and Magnesium removed) in the beverage industry to high purity demineralised water where only a few parts per trillion of dissolved ions are permissible in the semiconductor industry.
The required equipment also varies considerably with a simple softener plant requiring one process step and a custom engineered plant containing multiple processes. In addition to the treated water requirements different industries have varying levels of engineering specifications that need to be complied with and Ovivo have experience of working to some of the tightest specifications and customer requirements in the world.
If the majority of water impurities are dissolved salts and minerals, demineralisation using ion exchange resins produces high purity water quickly and very efficiently in terms of power consumption and waste water production. However, ion exchange does not efficiently remove uncharged molecules. For example, some organic species and suspended solids may require additional pre-treatment processes depending on the feed water source.
Ion exchange resins used in water treatment are small beads (≈0.6 mm diameter) that reversibly exchange ions in solution. Cation resins exchange ions such as sodium and calcium for hydrogen ions with anion resins exchanging ions such as chloride and sulphate for hydroxide.
Ion exchange plants are regenerated with dilute acid (sulphuric or hydrochloric) and alkali (sodium hydroxide) solutions requiring local storage of chemicals and waste water neutralisation facilities.
Reverse Osmosis systems work by pressurising the raw water and forcing it to pass through a semi permeable membrane. Water molecules are small and pass through the membrane whilst the dissolved salts, solids and organic molecules present in the water are rejected. Reverse Osmosis systems are suited to waters with high levels of dissolved solids and organic content. However, they are much less water and energy efficient and often used on low cost feed water sources.
Electro-deionisation uses a combination of ion exchange resin and ion selective membranes to remove low levels of dissolved ions typically found in RO permeate. The water to be treated passes though a compartment of ion exchange resin that has an electrical current applied to it to keep the ion exchange resin regenerated. The dissolved ions migrate through the membrane that retains the resin toward the anode of cathode and are swept away to waste via a reject stream.
Demineralised water treatment plants can be engineered to provide customers the lowest life cycle costs, taking into consideration:
Our team of experts at Ovivo will assess the best technology to meet your specific requirements and experience of building demineralisation processes up to 5000 m3/h.