Abstract
Desalination of seawater has been considered as one of the most promising techniques for supplying fresh water in Libya. Reverse osmosis (RO) is one of the major technologies for mid and large size desalination plants because it offers a mean of producing high quantity and quality of fresh water from seawater with lower energy consumption than other processes such as evaporation processes. Due to the development of thin film composite membranes and spiral wound element configurations, the paper aims to improve the performance a 10,000 m3/day Tajoura desalination plant in a manner of reverse osmosis, using three dissimilar software developed by several membrane manufactures. The performance improvement was achieved through high rejection and higher productivity which resulted in better water quality significantly lower energy consumption, and improved system operation (lower fouling, higher recovery with less number of membranes