Remineralization of permeate water by calcite bed in the Daoura’s plant (south of Morocco)

Abstract

To face water shortage and to fight drought, the National office of Water and Electricity (ONEE) carried out a program aiming at constructing several desalination stations of seawater in the South of Morocco. However, the final product water after desalination (osmosis water) has turned out to be unbalanced and has an aggressive character. Therefore, a post-treatment of remineralization is necessary to recover the calco-carbonic equilibrium of water and to protect the distribution network from corrosion degradation. Thereby, our work aims to examine the performance of the remineralization used in Daoura plant by the calcite bed in the absence of carbon dioxide CO₂ (without acidification), we have followed many parameters indicating the performance of this technique adopted such as pH, TAC (hydroxide, carbonate and bicarbonate content), Ca content, Langelier saturation index (LSI), Larson index (LR). The results obtained show that this technique adopted in Daoura plant brings to water back its entire calco-carbonic balance to measure up to the Moroccan standards of drinking water. Generally, the exploitation of the calcite bed technique for remineralization is simple, easy and it does not require any major efforts or precautions.