Economic material selection for reverse osmosis desalination plants

Abstract For Reverse Osmosis plants, the large variation in water composition and the large number of metallic materials on the market, make selection of the optimum material on both technical and economic grounds difficult, even for the corrosion specialist. This paper gives a general review of stainless steel and describes the results of an extensive programme of work commissioned by the Nickel Development Institute to develop a ‘Corrosion Atlas’ of stainless steels to solve this problem. Data is presented on the performance of a range of austenitic materials, allowing optimum selection for high pressure piping, pumps, filter bodies etc in Reverse Osmosis plants handling sea water, brackish waters and fresh waters.