The Effect of Combining TiO2 and ZnO in the Pretreatment of Seawater Reverse Osmosis Process

In Sultanate of Oman, the water demand is continuously increasing due to rapid industrialisation and population growth.Due to low average rainfall (100mm) and decline in ground water level, the demand is exceeding far by the supply.A number of desalination plants are coming up in Sultanate to counter the water crisis.Almost all the desalination plants are based on conventional energy sources and there is no large scale solar based desalination plant in Sultanate.The present research study is an attempt to develop a pre-treatment system using solar photo catalysis technique.A laboratory scale experimental set-up was put up at Caledonian college of engineering to study the effect of different Nano photo catalysts in degrading the organic pollutants in seawater.The sea water is continuously re-circulated in the presence of solar energy with Nano photo catalyst in suspension and thin film mode.The performance of the system was tested based on the various parameters, TOC, DO, TDS, pH, and Salinity.