Inland disposal of reject brine, be it produced water from gas wells or reject brine from a typical reverse osmosis (RO) desalination plant or cooling tower blowdown, poses insurmountable difficulty as deep well injections are being gradually phased out. Brine concentration followed by crystallization is a possibility provided high energy consumption and fouling can be avoided. Here we will present a novel brine concentration process through Evaporative Ion Exchange (EIX). EIX operates on the scientific premise that water uptake onto or water release from an ion exchange resin is greatly influenced by the relative humidity of air it is in contact with. A waste brine of 50,000 mg/L TDS can be concentrated by EIX to over 300,000 mg/L without major fouling caused by CaSO4 or silica. Although thermodynamically consistent, the process requires significantly less energy than the amount corresponding to the latent heat of vaporization. Experimental results with Marcellus produced water will be presented.

Low energy brine concentration through humidity driven evaporative ion exchange (EIX)

ACS Spring 2022

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.