Alejandro Ruiz-García

Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria | ULPGC · Department of Electronic Engineering and Automation

Pressure retarded osmosis (PRO) is a process that is able to convert a salinity gradient into electrical energy through a turbine. This process has gained attention as a possible renewable energy technology for integration into desalination plants to improve their energy efficiency. Despite recent efforts, PRO is not yet commercially available due...

One of the goals of the European Union (EU) is to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. To this end, internal combustion vehicles (ICVs) will be progressively replaced with battery electric vehicles (BEVs) over the course of a transition period that is expected to last until 2035. While GHG reductions have been extensively evaluated for continenta...

Reverse osmosis (RO) is the most widely used desalination technology for both seawater and brackish water. Unfortunately, RO remains an energy intensive technology despite the efforts being made to overcome this drawback. One of the factors that could help to minimize this issue is the optimal design and operation of RO systems. Membrane manufactur...

The development of the antifouling Reverse Osmosis (RO) membranes requires modeling and simulation as an essential tool alongside the progress of RO membrane technologies. After discussing the most recent knowledge on fouling, cleaning procedures, and pretreatment technologies, this review highlights the recent advances in RO membranes technology,...

The reverse osmosis (RO) process is one of the most popular membrane technologies for the generation of freshwater from seawater and brackish water resources. An industrial scale RO desalination consumes a considerable amount of energy due to the exergy destruction in several units of the process. To mitigate these limitations, several colleagues f...

Recently, the rapid worldwide growth of seawater reverse osmosis (SWRO) desalination capacity has reignited the boron removal challenge in drinking water. The objective of this review is to discuss the recent advances and patents in boron mitigation strategies in SWRO systems, and to present the energy and environmental concerns of SWRO desalinatio...

Reverse osmosis (RO) is the leading technology in desalination for both, brackish and seawater. Modeling RO process is a complex task as there are a high dependence on the operating conditions and feedwater characteristics. One of the main drawbacks of this technology is the performance decay due to fouling impact. Usually, fouling make the pressur...

Reverse Osmosis (RO) has already proved its worth as an efficient treatment method in chemical and environmental engineering applications. Various successful RO attempts for the rejection of organic and highly toxic pollutants from wastewater can be found in the literature over the last decade. Dimethylphenol is classified as a high-toxic organic c...

It is well known that reverse osmosis (RO) is the leading desalination technology. As an energy intensive technology, the exploitation of renewable energy sources (RES) to power RO systems is a attractive option. A strategy to take advantage of all the available energy of an off-grid renewable system is to work with the RO system under variable ope...

Brackish water desalination by reverse osmosis membranes is energy-driven process. With the purpose of improving the energy performance of such unit a full-scale BWRO desalination plant located in Canary Island (Spain) has been working under intermittent operating conditions for 14 years was assessed with conventional and enhanced (exogenous and en...

Boron overabundance in drinking and irrigation water is a severe environment and health issues because it is toxic to various crops and induces many human and animals diseases with long-term exposition. Desalinated seawater from reverses osmosis (RO) plant, which is the most widely used technology in this field, often contains high boron concentrat...

Reverse osmosis (RO) is the leading technology for desalinating seawater and brackish water (BW). In general, the desalination efficiency of BW is higher than that of seawater due to its lower total dissolved solids content. In addition to membrane fouling, fluctuations in the feedwater source are one of the main problems that affect desalination s...

Ultrafiltration (UF) membrane is an attractive pretreatment technology used in desalination water system. However, the unavoidable membrane fouling over time is the key problem in the development of this technology. Fouling evaluation in the initial stage may provide relevant information about the fouling tendencies. In this work, the extent of fou...

The use of renewable energy sources (RES) to power reverse osmosis (RO) desalination plants is a promising option for remote communities that face water scarcity. One drawback, however, is that the plants are generally obliged to operate intermittently due to the nature of the RES, which can reduce RO system performance in terms of production, salt...

Although reverse osmosis (RO) is the technology of choice for solving water shortage problems, it is a process that consumes large amounts of energy. Brackish water (BW) desalination is more efficient than seawater desalination due to the lower salinity of the feedwater source. This makes coupling renewable energy sources with BWRO systems attracti...

Reverse osmosis is the leading process in seawater desalination. However, it is still an energy intensive technology. Feed spacer geometry design is a key factor in reverse osmosis spiral wound membrane module performance. Correlations obtained from experimental work and computational fluid dynamics modeling were used in a computational tool to sim...

This paper analyzes the effectiveness of Directive (EU) 2019/883 from the social interest perspective. To achieve this aim, it assesses the performance of the sewage treatment plan (Annex IV of MARPOL) in Las Palmas Port and the accomplishment of the Cost Recovery System. This involves reviewing the mandatory fees for landing the sewage in the port...

The lack of rainfall in the Canary Islands’ Archipelago is leading to the depletion of the existing aquifers throughout the islands, above all in the easternmost isles (Gran Canaria, Lanzarote and Fuerteventura). Due to the increasing water demand in the southern area of the Island of Gran Canaria, appropriate planning has become necessary in order...

Reverse osmosis (RO) is the most widely used technology to desalinate brackish water and seawater. Significant efforts have been made in recent decades to improve RO efficiency. Feed spacer geometry design is a very important factor in RO membrane performance. In this work, correlations based on computational fluid dynamics and experimental work we...

Reverse osmosis (RO) is the most widespread technology in the desalination of seawater (SW) and brackish water (BW). In BW desalination, the use of energy recovery systems is not as evident as in the desalination of SW, due to the other factors such as higher flux recoveries and lower specific energy consumptions. This paper studied the economic fe...

Reverse osmosis efficiency depends on the precise prediction, among other factors, of membrane fouling. Although extensive research has been devoted to single foulants, rather less attention has been paid to simultaneous foulants which are more representative of real feed solutions. The main purpose of this research was therefore to characterize an...

Today, one of the main targets of seawater reverse osmosis (SWRO) membrane manufacturers is to increase boron rejection. For drinking water, the regulations in Spain are quite strict in terms of maximum boron content. The aim of this work is to propose a prediction model for average boron permeability coefficient as boric acid by evaluating the flu...

Fouled BWRO membrane elements from a full-scale desalination plant were characterized by collecting performance data and through a membrane autopsy in order to identify the fouling characteristics and behavior associated with feed water inorganic composition and operating conditions. This is the first time that membranes of a desalination plant hav...

Deficiencies in commercial programs for the design of RO systems motivate the development of new ones that allow a flexible design and more realistic operating conditions for this type of systems. This work presents a computational tool for designing BWRO systems with spiral-wound modules. This algorithm has advantages over commercial software supp...

Reverse Osmosis (RO) membrane fouling is one of the main challenges that membrane manufactures, the scientific community and industry professionals have to deal with. The consequences of this inevitable phenomenon have a negative effect on the performance of the desalination system. Predicting fouling in RO systems is key to evaluating the long-ter...

Groundwater is essential for agriculture in the Canary Islands. For example, in Gran Canaria 47.7% of water demand for agricultural purposes is taken from groundwater and in Tenerife 162.7 hm3 /year are also taken from wells. In water desalination processes, water recovery is one of the most important indexes for reverse osmosis (RO) system design....

The implementation of seawater reverse osmosis (SWRO) desalination plants was key to ensure the fresh water supply in arid and coastal regions. The high operating and maintenance (O&M) cost in these plants are an impediment. In this paper,the O&M cost of twelve SWRO desalination plants located in Fuerteventura (Canary Islands) were analyzed. A math...

Groundwater sources play a very important role in the Canary Islands. In fact the 80% of the reverse osmosis desalination plants in Gran Canaria are to treat brackish water. In water desalination processes, water recovery is one of the most important indexes for RO system design. But this is not always the most convenient from the point of view of...

Transport models in reverse osmosis (RO) desalination have been extensively studied taking into account various factors such as temperature, fouling, etc. However, there are not many models that describe the behavior of a desalination plant over long time periods. These models depend on operating time and empirical parameters to estimate the flux o...

The Canary Islands are an arid region. Therefore, water resources are scarce and several islands depend strongly on the sea and brackish water desalination. Water desalination, in the water policy of the Canary Islands, has been deeply rooted in the last 40 years, allowing solving and overcoming the shortage. This article concerns the beginning of...

Water resources available in the island of Fuerteventura come mostly from small-scale capacity seawater desalination plants. Desalted water demand in the island has grown considerably in the last decade forcing managers to adapt desalinated water supply constantly. Additionally, the operating cost of the plants is relevant. The staff, chemical cons...

The Canary Islands has been pioneer on desalination in Europe since the 1960s and has continued to use intensively the desalination technologies in order to provide water resources. However, one of the most important problems related to the operating efficient of seawater reverse osmosis (SWRO) desalination plants is dealing with the high-energy co...

The RO brackish water desalination plant described in this paper has been operating from June 2004 without using acid in the pretreatment and only using antiscalants during 75.000 h with the same RO elements. The present research describes the graphical evolution of the operating information of the first nine years. A study of the normalization and...

This paper proposes a simple design method of the RO system in RO brackish water desalination plants. This method is based on the application of maximum available recovery without scaling of any of the compounds present in the water as silica, calcium carbonate, calcium sulfate, barium sulfate, strontium sulfate, and calcium fluoride, and membrane...

The present research describes the graphical evolution of the operating information of the first seven years. A study of the normalization and standardization of the information about the seven years of evolution of the plant for fixed feedwater conditions, operating pressure, and system recovery are also shown, so that the performance evaluation o...

The reverse osmosis (RO) brackish water desalination plant described in this article has been operating without acid in the pretreatment and only using two types of antiscalants (this was the first experience of 40,000 operating hours in Canaries). This work describes the graphical evolution of all the daily operating information of the first five...

This study proposes a simple design method of the Reverse osmosis (RO) system in RO brackish water desalination plants. This method is based on the application of maximum available recovery without scaling of any of the compounds present in the water as silica, calcium carbonate, calcium sulfate, barium sulfate, strontium sulfate, and calcium fluor...