Sabine Pass, one of the largest LNG refineries in the United States, required a membrane desalination solution to cater to its extensive process water needs in order to produce a large amount of liquefed natural gas for export. The water is used for injection for compressor turbines for methane, propane and ethylene, wash water for gas turbines and other utility make-up uses. The feed water to the terminal comes from a local utility and the water requires further treatment to produce high-purity water with low conductivity and silica content for the plant’s uses.

The customer decided that a reverse osmosis (RO) desalination solution, followed by a demineralization step, would best suit their intended system designed to operate on single pass RO feed water. Since single pass RO water is a challenging application for conventional EDI systems, the customer carefully evaluated options for RO permeate polishing. QUA’s FEDI was chosen due to its design advantages that include reduced hardness scaling.