Identifying and Resolving Reverse Osmosis Performance Issues in a Midwest Ethanol Plant
I. Challenges A Midwest ethanol manufacturing plant replaced the membranes of their large reverse osmosis (RO) system but the differential pressures increased rapidly and exceeded the recommended operating ranges. If failure occurs, they will lose $200,000 in revenues per non-operational day. To cope with the problem, the ethanol plant carried out a Clean-In-Place (CIP) procedure…