ENEA and Italian company SEKO have developed an innovative high-pressure pumping system for reverse osmosis water desalination plants with integrated energy recovery. The prototype has low costs, is easy to develop industrially and is designed for small communities, islands and SMEs. The technology realized so far will be further fine-tuned and tested at the partner company's Rieti plant and, thanks to its easy scalability, can be offered in the different sizes required by the market. The reverse osmosis process currently represents the most popular approach globally for the purifying of seawater and allows the removal of the main ionic components present, by applying pressure to the solution to be treated and pushing it over a semi-permeable filter formed by the membrane. In this way, these elements are retained on the pressurized side of the membrane and are concentrated in a liquid fraction (called retentate), while water deprived of salts and impurities can pass to the other side of the membrane. This process requires a lot of energy and is accomplished by pumps that force the solution through a membrane.
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