Nanofiltration (NF)

What is NF water nanofiltration?

NF nanofiltration technology mainly removes divalent ions and larger particles resulting in a highly accurate water filtration process at the ionic level.

The nanofiltration system is used in applications with lower quality requirements for reverse osmosis, such as cooling water circuits, pool water treatment, stream return and circuit closure.

We use the plants for production water treatment, i.e. for partial desalination of water for decarbonisation, softening or for the recovery of water from waste water. Another application of nanofiltration is the removal of specific components, i.e. colouring agents from industrial water, pesticides from groundwater or nitrates.

Water nanofiltration is one of the most popular water and wastewater treatment technology processes used in the pharmaceutical, chemical, food or biomedical industries. Nanofiltration guarantees the reduction of humic acids and undesirable colour, as well as the partial softening of surface water, a process that is also often used in the paper and metallurgy industries.

Nanofiltration is used when it is necessary to find an alternative to evaporation or dehydration processes leading to a concentrated process stream. Another advantage of nanofiltration is the separation of sulphates from the injection liquid in the petrochemical industry for oil production. Thanks to these properties, there is no scaling or corrosion and the removal of sulphates ensures proper operation, during which plugging of wells could result in significantly lower oil production.

 

Reverse osmosis is a process that finds its main application in the demineralisation of water, as RO leads to non-selective removal of ions. In contrast, nanofiltration is used to reduce the amount of specific undesirable components in whole or in part. Nanofiltration primarily removes multivalent ions – monovalent ions are removed partially or hardly at all.

The nanofiltration process also uses much lower pressure than is needed during reverse osmosis processes, resulting in reduced energy consumption and increased efficiency. In some cases, nanofiltration also has the advantage of leaving some hardness in the water. Demineralisation would increase the corrosivity of the liquid, which would translate negatively into distribution pipelines, reducing their service life.

 

In order to ensure the proper operation of many manufacturing companies, it is necessary to supply water that meets certain standards and criteria. In such situations, only a properly selected treatment process will be able to provide a raw material used, for example, in the food industry, a diluent in the chemical industry or a cleaning agent for wider applications. Nanofiltration of NF water is one of the most widely used solutions for the petrochemical and chemical industries due to the increasing importance of membranes during the production processes of highly specialised chemical mixtures.

 

Nanofiltration is a process whose essence is the removal of divalent ions and monovalent ions of a larger structure, such as heavy metals, from liquids. The great advantage of this technology is that it can be used as a reverse osmosis process, using a larger ‘mesh’ during filtration. What’s more, during nanofiltration of water, less pressure is used than during RO, so that the degree of thickening can be significantly reduced.

Nanofiltration water filtration technology involves the use of ion-selective membranes that recognise not only the size, but also the type of ions present in the liquid. During the process, contaminants such as macromolecules, E. coli bacteria, proteins, colloids, oils, small chemicals and viruses can be effectively eliminated.

Water treated in this way is used in many industries as the basis for further production processes. Nanofiltration of water is also used wherever substances such as pesticides, calcium carbonates or nitrates need to be eliminated. Importantly, despite the filtration processes taking place, the purified water retains its optimum level of minerals found, for example, in alkaline water.

 

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