AWWA SP250142

This paper focusses on capital and operating costs of reverse osmosis. The costing of these systems is highly dependent on site- specific factors such as labor, electricity, and land. Principal site- specific factors that affect the process scheme, and therefore the system costs are: feedwater total dissolved solids and other constituents that may require removal; pretreatment requirements; plant arrangement, such as single or dual purpose; feasibility of blending raw water with the product water; and method of concentrate disposal. In order to quantify the economic impacts of site-specific factors, reference designs were developed and costed. Each reference design was then altered with respect to each of the site-specific factors, and costed for comparison with the reference designs.