Handling of Brine Effluent of Desalination Plant through Producing Chemicals

Most of Gulf countries tend to operate Desalination plants in order to produce valid and fresh water for human being usage. Unfortunately, those plants discard huge tones of salts into sea and the concentrations of those salts are very high which can disturb the ecosystem in sea. In the addition these are mainly attributed to concentrate chemical discharges, which may impair coastal water quality and affect marine life. Brine is a solution of salt (usually sodium chloride) in water. Instead of dumping the brine into sea water as way of disposal. It is good to utilize the salt brine as raw material for producing different chemicals through electrolysis process. The process of electrolysis involves using an electric current and require a lot of electricity that is mainly produced by the electrical energy comes from a d.c. (direct current) battery or power pack supply. In the experiment power pack supply was used (15V, 0.48A for 5 hours) in order to produce 1 liter of sodium hydroxide and 1 liter of hydrochloric acid. Moreover, there were other products such as sodium hypochlorite and chlorine gas which had been used to produce iron (I) chloride and Hydrogen gas was collected in balloon.

Keywords: Rejected salt brine; Electrolysis; d.c. (direct current); Chemical substances