Sebastián O. Pérez Báez

University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria | ULPGC · Department of Processes Engineering

This study explores the potential of piloting desalination plants in a systematic way to evaluate energy improvements in water desalination processes. Pilot tests with the latest generation of reverse osmosis membranes in large desalination plants are becoming increasingly common, as small-scale experiments are carried out on the operation of new g...

The penetration of renewable energies in island electricity systems (IESs) poses a series of challenges, which include, among others, grid stability, the response to demand, and the security of the supply. Based on the current characteristics of electricity demand on the islands of the Canary Archipelago (Spain) and their electricity production sys...

A real-scale application experience Natural Treatment Systems for Wastewater (NTSW) operating in continues with livestock farms for one year. These systems are based on digesters, subsurface vertical flow constructed wetlands (SVFCW) and facultative ponds. Chemical Oxygen Demand removal efficiency (CODRE) has obtained between 70 and 90%. Likewise,...

This paper reports results of a 5-year trial study of a natural treatment system for wastewater (NTSW) on a livestock pig farm on Gran Canaria (Canary Islands, Spain). The pilot plant consist of a rotary screen, a first-generation multi-chamber digester, and two horizontal subsurface flow treatment wetlands (HSFCW) with a pond installed between the...

This article shows the optimization of the reverse osmosis process in seawater desalination plants, taking the example of the Canary Islands, where there are more than 320 units of different sizes, both private and public. The objective is to improve the energy efficiency of the system in order to save on operation costs as well as reduce the carbo...

The water situation in the Canary Islands has been a historical problem that has been sought to be solved in various ways. After years of work, efforts have focused on desalination of seawater to provide safe water mainly to citizens, agriculture, and tourism. Due to the high demand in the Islands, the Canary Islands was a pioneering place in the w...

Anaerobic lagoons are natural wastewater treatment systems suitable for swine farms in small communities due to its low operational and building costs, as well as for the environmental sustainability that these technologies enable. The local weather is one of the factors which greatly influences the efficiency of the organic matter degradation with...

The water-energy nexus, together with the need for sustainable management of these interconnected resources, has attracted growing attention from the scientific community. This paper focuses on this nexus from the point of view of the energy that is required by wastewater treatment plants, which are intensive energy consumers and major emitters of...

Anaerobic digestion technologies offer a set of advantages when they are implemented as a primary treatment phase prior to the use of constructed wetland systems in low cost wastewater facilities. The aim of this study is to describe a model capable of reflecting the complex functioning of anaerobic lagoons, subject to continuous flux in the feed p...

This research analyzes the water-energy nexus contribution to climate change from the integral water cycle perspective. A prior analysis of the sectors involved in global warming showed that clear water/energy interdependence was a crucial factor in increasing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Although the analysis of water consumption in the energy...

In this article, a mechanistic process-based model is developed, for accurate predictions of pig farms wastewater behavior in free water constructed wetlands. Twenty-six variables were considered in order to simulate the simultaneous hydraulic, physical, biochemical and physico-chemical characteristics of different processes that are happening in t...

The paper analyses the extrapolation of the results obtained in a pilot plant to a full-scale seawater desalination plant. A technological system was implemented in the pre-treatment line of Las Palmas III seawater reverse osmosis (RO) desalination plant with a capacity of 36,000 m³/d. This system is aimed to control membrane fouling. It consists i...

Purpose Most LCAs estimate environmental impacts for a specific situation (industry, sector or location) in a generic way, without considering the specific characteristics of the product or service being evaluated. This paper outlines the relevance of the use of parameters and scenarios in environmental assessment for a daily newspaper considering...

Because of their geographical isolation, many areas depend mainly on imported fossil fuels for their water and energy production. In this context, the Canary Islands are one such remote area. Due to the topography of the islands, there are numerous isolated areas on each of the islands far from the major population centres. These are known as ‘isla...

Nowadays, the most important problems that affect the world are carbon footprint decrease, fossil fuel use, and climate change. As proof of that, all environmental international agencies impose different laws and rules related to greenhouse effect. European Union policy is a clear example, which is explained in the document “2020 Strategies (COM/20...

The study ponds are part of a peatland located in the Elqui river basin of the Andes. They turned out to be heliotropic (homoeothermic), mesotrophic and mesopoikilohaline microlimnotopes. The ponds showed high content of dissolved metals, mainly Ca (mean ~205 mg/l), Na (~60 mg/l), Mg (~60 mg/l) and K (~13 mg/l), and the inorganic non-metals sulfate...

Recent studies and projects have shown that a combination of a reverse osmosis desalination plant with a wind power supply is technologically feasible if the plant operates with fluctuating and intermittent loads and in this way follows the variable energy supply characteristic of a wind turbine. The direct integration of renewable energy into a re...

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...

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...

The purpose of this study is to undertake the characterisation of industrial-type wastewaters and to provide the design and application of a treatment system using membrane technology backed up by multiple laboratory-based experimental trials to observe and determine the stages required in the process. An analysis of the various industrial sectors...

Reverse osmosis is a widely used and rapidly growing desalination technology. Despite the many benefits the technology has to offer, still challenging to all desalination plants is the environmentally sensitive effects attributed to the discharge into the sea of the rejected brine, which can very often severely damage the receiving environment, and...

This paper presents the results of research work conducted as part of a doctoral thesis and undertaken with the aim of resolving the problem of accelerated fouling of reverse osmosis membranes (made from spiral-wound polyamide), as a result of the deposition of colloidal particles (particulate fouling), the precipitation of inorganic salts (scaling...

This paper proposes a simple calculation method to estimate the maximum conversion level in reverse osmosis (RO) brackish water desalination plants. The method is based on the scaling potential of different compounds found in the water to be treated. These compounds include silica, calcium carbonate, calcium sulphate, barium sulphate, strontium sul...

Seawater desalination has become an important and ever-increasing industry which faces up the environmental situation of water scarcity present in some Mediterranean countries and in the Canary Islands (Spain). This activity presents several environmental drawbacks and negative impacts on marine ecosystems, originated mainly by the discharge into t...

The elimination and detoxification of water contaminated with the principal commercial fungicides—thia-bendazole (Textar 60 T) and imazalil sulphate (Fruitgard IS 7.5)—used in the postharvest treatment of ba-nanas was successfully achieved through the use of advanced oxidation processes (AOPs). The techniques tested were heterogeneous photocatalysi...

RESUMEN: La desalación de agua de mar, por ósmosis inversa, representa una importante alternativa de abasto de agua potable, para la ciudad de Puerto Peñasco, Sonora México. Este proceso consiste en forzar la separación del agua de sus sales en membranas y la energía que consume es proporcional a la salinidad del agua y además requiere agua libre d...

Pre-treatment systems in reverse osmosis seawater desalination plants can be relatively simple or complex depending upon the direct function of the physical, chemical and microbiological quality of the water which is fed through the reverse osmosis membranes which separate the salts and the other disperse matter (colloids and micro-organisms) which...

Following laboratory-scale research as part of the LIFE programme, a pilot plant with a capacity of 30 m 3 /d was built. This plant allowed the optimization of the parameters necessary for the engineering analysis, as well as the extrapolation of results and the development of a treatment plant with a capacity of 500 m 3 /d. The latter includes all...

This article reports on the adverse effects on the microbiological quality of sea water with a high degree of biological contamination captured by an open intake system when it is subjected to intermittent, or shock treatment, doses of an oxidising biocide, such as sodium hypochlorite NaClO (KmnO4 O3, H2 O2), even though the purpose is to control m...

This article reports the results of a process of optimising the dosage of Sodium hyplochlorite and Metabisulphite, performed on sea water in the pre-treatment division of the "Las Palmas III" reverse osmosis desalination plant, currently operated by Empresa Mixta de Aguas de las Palmas (EMALSA), responsible for providing drinking water to more than...

It is hoped to make it sufficiently clear with this article that it is of fundamental importance that the reverse osmosis membranes and the conditions under which they will operate be appropriately selected. It is obvious that this choice must be made primarily in function of the quality of the water that will be processed in the water treatment pl...

A study was carried out on a NaCl H2O RO thin film composite reverse osmosis membrane system to characterize these membranes, determine their performance and predict the effects of pressure and solute concentration in the feed using the correlation from the Kimura Sourirajan analysis. The effect of the solute concentration in the feed (0.0043–0.086...

El Desarrollo Sostenible (D.S.) y la interdependencia entre la econo-mía y el medio ambiente son con-ceptos que, en los últimos años, han suscitado un creciente interés entre los poderes públicos y la sociedad en general. Por ello, la incorporación del factor ambiental en el diseño de productos y procesos trata de si -multanear el desarrollo económ...

En el estudio se analiza los Residuos Industriales Peligrosos y No Peligrosos generados en las actividades industriales de las empresas situadas en el Polígono Industrial de Arinaga en el año 2008. En la primera parte se identifican, caracterizan y cuantifican los residuos industriales generados. En la segunda parte se efectúa un análisis y valorac...