ABSTRACT
Energy is required for the feed pump, recirculation pumps, pretreatment, heat treatment, cleaning and sterilization, and control equipment. The energy required by recirculation pumps is related to the recirculation fl ow rate and the pressure drop of the system. Membrane fi ltration consumes about 14-36 kJ/kg of water removed, which is a signifi cantly smaller amount of energy than that consumed by evaporation. The energy consumption for evaporation with mechanical vapor-recompression is 350 kJ/kg of removed water. Additional energy savings could be achieved by processing hot feed and recovering heat in the hot permeate (Kumar et al., 1999).
