Sea Recovery Watermakers

Hi Cpt Bill

I went digging through my old engineering course notes.
500PPm was what the notes say but do not have a standard that is referred to.
At any rate the WHO standards on the internet as a bit confusing some saying 1000 and some 500.
I do not think you can taste salt until you are at 650. I tried it again today.. made water at 650 and its tastes a bit sweeter.. odd but that's what i taste. But its a definite different taste to the 230 the watermakers are belting out.
As for membrane cleaning.. we do this as a preventative measure. I have never seen it help with high salinity as high salinity normally means that the membrane is compromised and letting bigger particle through. Its hard for a cleaner to fix that.
Thanks
Oceaneer

Interesting. And it makes sense about the effects of cleaning. Thanks.

I spent a good deal of time last night, and this morning reading all the threads on RO systems especially Sea Recovery! So I called my buddy on the left coast, who owns a water technology company today and ask him if he'd build me a bullet proof water maker. He just finished building a 70,000 gallon per day RO unit for the Marshall Islands. I told him what I had been reading, and asked him if he'd build an 1,100 gallon per day water maker for me. Although it's a little small for him, he agreed. So, I'm not going to put myself in that situation of buying...nay...overpaying for a POS water maker that won't comply with my demands.
Thank you for everyone's opinions on this and real world tales...you all saved me a bunch of money! And no, I won't split my savings and cut everyone here a check!

I suspect it will be bittersweet. The sweet part will come from knowing that you saved a bunch of money.

The bitter part will come when "something" goes wrong when you are in an inconvenient location, and nobody carries the particular part that you need. Not that this can't also happen with name-brand water makers, of course.

The 70k gallon per day water maker probably comes with a maintenance schedule and a custodian who oversees it. On your boat, that will be you

I also remember learning just how regional the boating industry is, with one brand or another being dominant in region A, while a totally different brand was dominant in region B. Getting spares for a B unit while in an A region can be near impossible, and very frustrating while looking at a shelf full of spares for brand A.

If you are the kind of guy for whom the most important thing is "dispatch reliability"*, then having two identical water makers, each of which can make enough water for the boat alone, may make sense. That way, when one breaks, just flip on the other, and make a note in the log for the next time you are in a convenient port for repairs. If both break, hopefully having two identical units will mean you can cannibalize one to make the other work.

Anyhow, there's no universal right answer, just the right one for you.

Dan

* Dispatch reliability -- Can the trip start and finish without equipment failures causing an abort or adjustment of the trip's itinerary. If this is always the case, you have 100% dispatch reliability. If half of your trips require some kind of adjustment due to equipment, you have 50% dispatch reliability. Failures happen, so achieving dispatch reliability is all about system redundancy -- the ability to carry on when (not if) something fails.

Hi Dan, thanks for your input...I seriously doubt that this solution will save me money, initially, it's probably going to be much more than currently production models ...this is going to be a one off custom build for a friend (me). I'm sure I'll stock up on "breakable/replaceable" parts prior to leaving port. But if it proves reliable...it's well worth the money. Besides, if I get in trouble, he'll send an engineer to where I am, along with all parts to get me up and running again...that's worth a lot of money to me. I understand what you're saying, and I appreciate it.

Hi,

Any of the manufacturers I am familiar with will also provide this service at cost to the end user so the savings need to be determined when the actual cost of having that flying visit are evaluated.

I'm sure that's true....but I think that I'm at the upper rung in a situation like this. And because I'm going to be at anchor most of the time, it's a nice feeling that I don't have to get in the back of the line for service. He's a good friend of mine, and if I have problems...I become a priority. How many people who own boats can make that claim? I'm really big into networking, I do things for people (willingly, I believe in random acts of kindness) and based on the multitude of failures with RO systems...I'm kinda thinkin' having a friend in your corner is paramount.

Considering that a pump is a pretty much just a pump and a membrane is a pretty much just a membrane, unless you really know a lot about the reliability and value of the components, an RO is pretty much an RO no matter who assembles the components. Even if you don't know you may be lucky and get what you pay for. Or not.

And as someone else mentioned, there are regional favorites that have nothing to do with quality or value of components. A system assembler in San Diego might have completely different sources and ideas about the "best" component than one in Fort Lauderdale.

Since it seems to matter, go with a modular system and buy a lot of spares.

There may be (are) issues with proprietary control boards but if you are building a custom unit there are off the shelf industrial controls that are very robust and easily replaced. This is not a high tech exercise.

Gee, no one commented on the simplicity and brilliance of this idea of redundancy.

It is the best thing to do. But also in terms of super high consumption, you can run both units. Personally I like a watermaker with enough capacity to fill 60-75% of the water tank in 4 hours or less. If you're doing typical travelling with an owner then you can refill it between marina's and not have to run it in a dirty marina and also not take all day.

If you have room and want to live with the complexity of duplicated piping, filters, and associated power supplies then it is an option.

Given the size of the boat discussed, an easily maintained modular low tech, single unit with the few spares required to equal a second unit might be a far more cost effective and maintainable solution.

In my humble opinion anyway.

Hi,

This probably works when you only carry a few hundred gallons, I don't know if we have either the space or budget for machines that can do that on the one I am doing now we would need machines that made nearly 100 US Gal a minute.

It all depends on the boat and how it s used... I think this thread, and it's latest post, is about boats under 100' so 100 gal a minute watermaker are pretty irrelevant.

Capt J has a good point about filing up 2/3 tank in 4 hours or so for many reasons which may not be obvious to those running a 200 footer. For instance, in our case (70 footer) we can run most of the boat on one of our 20kw Genset. But when cooking and running the 220v watermaker, if the 48k btu saloon compressor kick in the temporary voltage drop will cause the watermaker to shut down... So being able to quickly fill most of the tank in between meals make sense.

Or, in our case we move quiet a bit. If the Bahamas, we often anchor out in water shallow enough to be stirred by the props... That means we need to turn off th WM before maneuvering so leaving it on for long time periods isn't convenient.

Or noise... High pressure pumps make a noise which may be heard from staterooms depending on the set up, making it a possible problem to run it at night.

Again, it depends but in the real world, being able to quickly fill up the tank has benefits. Just like on many boats, you won't have room to have two watermakers, even modulars like ours.

Back to sea recovery! as mentioned in another thread! we recently had to spent $4000 to upgrade the screen and control system, including a mandatory bypass system on the pump. Talk about lousy support.

And the new screen and control system is poorly designed. On the old screen, you had all the critical parameters (pressures, flows and ppm) visible on one screen... Nt any more, you have to scroll between 3 tabs to few all three groups. Silly. And when you have a fault, you can only read the actual fault on the main screen, not on the remote. In our case, it means having to go into a hot engine room, all the way forward, between 2 hot and possible running engines to read the actual code. Plain stupid.

Yes, the basic components are pretty simple and off the shelves but it s often the small details like above which make the difference.

So you are saying that the yacht you are on holds 36,000 gallons of water???

100gal min x 60 mins= 6000galx4hrs= 24000 x 2/3 of a tank =36,000 gallons of water????

I mentioned that for basically the 100'< crowd for reasons Pascal has mentioned. I have also had to buy several screens and control pads for Sea Recovery that never seem to last. I have had good luck the the FCI electronics, but prefer all analog and no electronics.

Hi,

No, note I said nearly 100 Gal a minute.

We can load around 25,000 US Gal FW

Do you happen to have a link to the article?

Tried Googling it but didn't find anything.

Selective nanopores in graphene dramatically improve desalination and purification | KurzweilAI

Thanks captholli,
Haven't checked the price of gallium lately...but I certainly like the direction they are going. I was just curious how long the current technology has been around? It has to be at least 50 years old, maybe older...I haven't a clue, but it would be nice to apply some 21st Century technology to this problem. A think tank awhile back said that the next World War would be fought over water. Not too difficult to believe.