Experimental performance evaluation of battery powered small-scale reverse osmosis desalination system

Desalination is the process of removal of salts from seawater or brackish water to produce fresh water. This paper presents the performance evaluation of a small-scale reverse osmosis desalination system, run on batteries. The system is The data acquisition and monitoring device used is from the National Instruments, compatible with Lab VIEW software which provides a visual medium for monitoring the process parameters. For the purpose of performance evaluation, the system is run at steady state for a period of time and the corresponding current and voltage across the system is recorded every second. The product flow rate in liters/min and the product water conductivity in ppm are studied for the given duration of time. Performance evaluation parameters namely, the salt rejection, based on the product and feed water salinity, the recovery ratio based on feed water and product water flow rates and the specific energy consumption in kWh/m3 are also calculated.