REASONING THE NEED TO INTRODUCE THE MEMBRANE TECHNOLOGY OF WATER TREATMENT AT HEAT-AND-POWER PLANTS OF ASTRAKHAN
An overview of water treatment technologies employed at the heat-and-power plants of Astrakhan is made by the authors. Water treatment facilities are in a very poor condition. As a result, heat-and-power equipment suffers from considerable scaling, fouling and corrosion problems. New membrane technologies, including ultra-filtration and nano-filtration, seem to be a promising way to improve the water quality. The evaluation of the present-day water treatment efficiency with account for the effective standards and requirements makes it possible to conclude that new pressure-driven membrane processes must be implemented at heat-and-power plants. Membrane technologies will improve the quality of water processed at operating power generating stations or the quality of the water supplied to new structures of the city of Astrakhan; they will reduce the reagent consumption rate and improve the role of water purification systems as barriers that prevent water contamination. Besides, membranes ensure a high efficiency of turbidity removal, and membrane facilities are small and simple in operation. The main difference of membrane technologies if compared to conventional sedimentation and filtration systems consists in the high quality of water irrespective of fluctuations in the temperature and composition of inflowing flows of water. Authors are going to continue their research into the issue of potential wide-scale introduction of newly developed techniques at the heat-and-power plants of Astrakhan to provide clear water to boiler plants at low operational costs. The research results indicate that the above approach has a strong potential in terms of water treatment in the power industry. The new procedure was developed by the authors to identify and project the scaling and fouling rates within membrane modules and to predict the membrane performance (permeate flux) depending on the feed water quality and modes of operation.