Reverse Osmosis Concentrate Management through Wetlands

Reverse Osmosis is a very good method of producing potable water from brackish water but it creates a brine or concentrate which is expensive to dispose. A vertical flow wetland can remove harmful ions (arsenic, selenium, chromium, etc.) and change a waste product into resource for the environment.

This idea of managing concentrate through natural means is a complete shift in thinking from conventional concentrate management. Instead of using lots of energy and highly engineered systems, we can use natural means to process the concentrate, removing the harmful constituents and returning the benign salts back to nature.

While the preliminary results look very encouraging there is a lot more work to do before ADEQ, environmentalist and the water community are convinced that this process just may work in the southwest Valley of the Sun.