Using reclaimed water as make-up water for a district heating system: a case study in Beijing

Make-up water used for a district heating system in Beijing is about 63 kg/m2.a, so the total quantity of make-up water is over 10 million m3 per year. Water deficiency is very serious in Beijing. Using reclaimed water as make-up water is one of the important measures to relieve water crises of the city. This study is mainly on nanofiltration (NF) process. The reclaimed water for the experiment is the effluent of The Sixth Water Plant, an urban reclaimed water plant in Beijing. Micro-filter (MF) and activated carbon filtration are used as pretreatment units to eliminate turbidity, organic matter in reclaimed water to avoid contamination and scale on the surface of NF membrane. Four SAEHAN NE-90 membrane elements with an array of 2-1-1 are selected for the NF unit and the flow rate is controlled around 1 m3/h. Through the test, it has been verified that NF membrane has high removal rate to the salt and impurity of reclaimed water. The average salt removal rate of the system is more than 94%, while the rejections of bivalent ions are more than 98%. The removal rates of organic matter, NH3-N and TP are 77%, 96% and 84% respectively. Temperature is a main influence of the process. When temperature is increasing, the permeate flux is increasing as well. The operating pressure is an important factor effecting membrane flux also. By the data comparison it is confirmed that the appropriate operating pressure and the water recovery of NF system are 0.75 MPa and 63.5% respectively.