Analysis of Desalination Discharge Brines for Pollutants Using the Avio 550 Max ICP-OES

Introduction

With climate change, access to fresh water is decreasing in many areas around the world. Combined with the continuing rise in global population, a shortage of potable water is imminent unless other sources of fresh water can be found. One way to increase amounts of potable water is through desalination of seawater, a technique which has been rapidly growing in importance. The most common desalination method is reverse osmosis, a process which uses high pressure to force seawater through a membrane which separates minerals from the water, resulting in both fresh/potable water and a brine which contains the minerals removed from the seawater. With so much brine being returned to oceans, its content should be monitored for elements which may have been picked up during the desalination process and can have a negative impact on the aquatic environment.

This work demonstrates the ability of the Avio® 550 Max fully simultaneous ICP-OES to measure elements of environmental importance in desalination discharge brines, taking advantage of the Avio’s dual view capability and proprietary PlasmaShear™ technology to attain accurate, stable results. Because of the Avio’s matrix tolerance, the brines were run undiluted with no pre-treatment other than acidification, allowing lower concentrations to be measured.