The beachwell seawater intake system has been identified as a promising technique to replace conventional surface seawater pretreatment systems in the reverse osmosis (RO) desalination process. Conventional pretreatment is costly, space-consuming and the filtrate quality and quantity are usually not steady. In this paper the results of a study to investigate the technical and economic feasibility of feeding RO desalination systems with naturally filtered seawater from a beachwell intake are outlined. Two experimental seawater RO systems fitted with identical hollow fine-fiber membranes were operated simultaneously. One of the systems was fed with water derived from a beachwell and the other fed with conventionally pretreated surface seawater. Analysis of the data collected through one complete calendar year demonstrated the superiority of the beachwell feed water over the conventionally pretreated water in terms of quality and suitability as feed for RO systems. A techno-economic study proved that beachwell intake is more economical in terms of capital and running costs than the conventional system as a pretreatment technique for the seawater reverse osmosis (SWRO) desalination process.
