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In my company we already use RO water for CIP. Because there is an environmental permit issue regarding the effluent amount limit outside plant, i try to look up the possibility of using softener water for CIP instead of RO. The purpose is to reduce the reject water of RO (high silica content) My company also has a budget issue so that we don't have a choice for treated the RO reject water.

Please share if there is water quality standard from eligible institution

Fajrh
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1 Answers1

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When selecting CIP water, it needs to be drinking water quality and not damage the system it is cleaning:

  1. The water must be potable. Basically is the water classified as safe to drink in your respective country/jurisdiction. This means it is free of bacteria, heavy metals, and other contaminants. Depending on how the facility is classified you may have to show a residual level of disinfectant at the point of use such as free chlorides. Just follow your local drinking water standards. I doubt any country will provide CIP specific standards because it falls under the same category as drinking water.
  2. The water must not damage the equipment. Such as sodium in the soft water from an ion exchange softener increasing corrosion. Or the required free chlorides attacking stainless. This is probably a negligible issue in most situations. Drinking water can have fairly high hardness though (high Ca and Mg) which can foul heat exchanges, but this is less of an issue if the heat sources are off during the CIP process and no issue if the softener operates reliably.

I am not a expert on the chemistry, but depending on how your permit is written you could also consider lime softening the RO reject stream with Calcium Hydroxide to precipitate the silica out of solution to meet the environmental effluent standards. That might be an easier task than bringing low quality water up to drinking water standards without RO.

ericnutsch
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