Boiler feedwater treatment design alternatives

[Hopocrisy]

This is my first post and I will do my best to make it a good one.

Quick background;
I have recently transitioned across the country to a new role as a corporate engineer for the same large company (50,000 employees or so) I have been working for since university.
In my previous role as a plant process engineer most projects were smaller in scope and I had operational responsibilities.
I am now solely tasked with design and execution of projects.

Now to the actual questions.
I have just been assigned to an already approved project (with significant engineering work already completed by the local engineer) and am in the process of transferring project ownership to myself.
The goal is to save energy (natural gas) by reducing the volume of required blowdown in our boilers.
Currently boiler feedwater is from the well, softened, mechanically de-aerated, then chemical O2 scavenged and I believe some amine chemistry to prevent corrosion.
The plant's idea is to add an RO unit somewhere upstream of the boilers with the hope that the total added cost will be more than offset by the energy savings associated with not discharging 212F, treated, boilerwater as much.

I've never worked with an RO other than a single lab in college.
Does anyone have any experience designing a system?
What are often used alternatives, such as DI?
Opinion on softening the water before sending to the RO or vice-versa?

I can provide many more details on request, for now this post seems long enough.
Your responses are appreciated.
I did look for similar posts and could not find what I am looking for. I'm guessing it's out there though and I am just new to ENG-TIPS, apologies if this has been addressed already.

 

[bimr]

The state of the art for utility boiler systems is RO followed by CDI. You would probably get by with just the RO, which will remove 90+% of the dissolved salts.

oftening is a good aternative, especially since you already have a softening unit onsite.

It is a good alternative to soften the water prior to the RO. Softening the water will eliminate the scaling (calcium and magnesium) tendencies of the water.

Softening of the water will also remove some other parameters such as iron that may foul the RO system.

You need to obtain a complete water analysis and review it. You also need to run the SDI test to understand how much solids are present.