A Case Study of Calcium Carbonate Crystallization during Reverse Osmosis Water Desalination in Presence of Novel Fluorescent-Tagged Antiscalants

Calcium carbonate scaling in reverse osmosis (RO) desalination process is studied in the presence of two novel fluorescent-tagged scale inhibitors 1,8-naphthalimide-tagged polyacrylate (PAA-F1) and 1-hydroxy-7-(6-methoxy-1,3-dioxo-1H-benzo[de]isoquinolin-2(3H)-yl)heptane-1,1-diyl-bis(phosphonic acid) (HEDP-F) by fluorescent microscopy (FM) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Both antiscalants diminished the mean size of calcite crystals relative to the blank experiment. The behavior and localization of HEDP-F and PAA-F1 during calcite scale formation on membrane surface was found to be significantly different from the distribution in similar RO experiments with gypsum, reported earlier. In the former case, both antiscalants are concentrated exactly on the surface of calcium carbonate crystals, while in the latter one they form their own phases (Ca-HEDP-F and Ca-PAA-F1) and are not detected on gypsum scale. The difference is interpreted in terms of interplay between background calcium concentration and sparingly soluble calcium salts’ solubility. HEDP-F reveals slightly higher efficiency than PAA-F1 against calcite scale formation, while PAA-F exhibits a higher ability to change calcite morphology. It is demonstrated that there is a lack of correlation between antiscaling efficacy and ability of antiscalant to change calcium carbonate morphology in a particular case study. An application of fluorescent-tagged antiscalants in RO experiments provides a unique possibility to track the scale inhibitor molecules’ localization during calcite scale formation. Fluorescent-tagged antiscalants are presumed to become a very powerful tool in membrane scaling inhibition studies.