ORIGINAL PAPER Effect of temperature on seawater desalination-water quality analyses for desalinated seawater for its use as drinking and irrigation water Enver Guler • Deniz Ozakdag • Muserref Arda • Mithat Yuksel • Nalan Kabay Received: 28 June 2009 / Accepted: 18 October 2009 / Published online: 30 April 2010 Ó Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010 Abstract The effect of feed seawater temperature on the quality of product water in a reverse osmosis process was investigated using typical seawater at Urla Bay, Izmir region, Turkey. The tests were carried out at different feed seawater temperatures (11–23°C) using two RO modules with one mem- brane element each. A number of variables, including pH, conductivity, total dissolved solids, salinity, rejection percentage of a number of ions (Na ? ,K ? , Ca 2? , Mg 2? , Cl - , HCO 3 - , and SO 4 2- ), and the levels of boron and turbidities in collected permeates, were measured. The suitability of these permeates as irrigation and drinking water was checked by com- parison with water quality standards. Keywords Drinking water Á Irrigation water Á Reverse osmosis Á SWRO Á Water quality standards Introduction Agriculture is responsible for the primary consump- tive use of water in many regions of the world. Saline water has long been considered to be unusable for irrigation, but new research during the past two decades has helped bring into practice a number of large irrigation schemes that depend on saline water. Salinity generally affects the growth of plants by producing either an ion excess or a water deficit in the expanded leaves. Water uptake is restricted by salinity due to the high osmotic potential in the soil and high concentrations of specific ions that may cause physiological disorders in the plant tissues and reduce yields. However, some crops, such as wheat and barley, can be salt tolerant, a property that can be enhanced by selection and breeding (Ghadiri et al. 2005). Boron toxicity is an important plant disorder that can limit plant growth on soils of arid and semi-arid environments throughout the world. High concentra- tions of boron may occur naturally in the soil or groundwater, or they may be added to the soil as a result of mining activity, fertilizers, or irrigation water. Although boron toxicity is of considerable agronomic importance, information on this subject is rather fragmented and limited. Boron has also been found to be potentially harmful in drinking water and has suspected teratogenetic properties. The World Health Organization (WHO) has set a limit of 0.5 mg/L for boron in drinking water and indicated values between 0.3 and 0.5 mg/L for medium and large desalination plants (Nadav 1999). The production of safe water from seawater has become an obligation in some regions, such as in the E. Guler Á M. Yuksel Á N. Kabay (&) Department of Chemical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Ege University, Izmir 35100, Turkey e-mail: nalan.kabay@ege.edu.tr D. Ozakdag Á M. Arda Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science, Ege University, Izmir 35100, Turkey 123 Environ Geochem Health (2010) 32:335–339 DOI 10.1007/s10653-010-9294-x