Multi-functional forward osmosis draw solutes for seawater desalination

Forward osmosis(FO), as one of the emerging desalination technologies, has the potential to produce fresh water from a variety of water sources by utilizing the osmotic pressure gradient across a semi-permeable membrane.Draw solution, as an essential component of any FO process, can extract water molecules from seawater or wastewater. An ideal draw solution should meet three essential requirements, namely high osmotic pressure, low reverse flux, and facile regeneration mechanism. The selection of proper draw solutes is especially critical for an energy-efficient FO process since the energy consumption mostly arises from the separation or regeneration of the draw solution. Recently, we developed a few multi-functional FO draw solutes, mainly aiming to enhance the FO water flux and to explore facile re-concentration methods. This review summarizes these draw solutes,including Na^+_- functionalized carbon quantum dots, thermoresponsive copolymers, hydrophilic magnetic nanoparticles, and thermoresponsive magnetic nanoparticles.

Error correction method of 6-HTRT parallel mechanics

The method of error correction is one of key techniques of parallel robot. A new method of end error correction of 6-HTRT parallel robot is presented for engineering and researching on correlative theory of 6-HTRT parallel robot. The method need calculate many kinematics equations of parallel robot such as position back solution, velocity Jacobin, position forward solution and error Jacobin. New methods presented for solving these questions are simpler and fitter for programming and calculating, because former methods are too complex to use in engineering. These questions may be solved by iterative method of numerical value which has fast velocity of calculating. These new methods may be used in other mechanism of parallel robot too, and so have wider using value. The experimental results demonstrate that the system may satisfy entirely high technical request and fit for engineering in new measures.

Kinematic Calibration of Asymmetricly Actuated 6-DOF 3-PPPS Parallel Mechanism

An asymmetric actuated 3-PPPS parallel mechanism was analyzed in its application to an aircraft wing adjustment process.The posture alignment precision at the wing ends was enhanced with a kinematic calibration method.A constraint equation was built based on a constraint condition that distances among spherical joints of the mechanism were constant,and further eight groups of analytic forward solutions of all poses of the mechanism were solved.An inverse equation of the posture alignment displacements of aircraft wing parts was built based on space vector chains,and a mapping equation of the pose and geometric errors of the posture alignment mechanism containing 39 error sources was derived by differentiating the kinematic equation of the mechanism.After kinematic calibration experiments,the maximum position error of the posture alignment platform dropped from 2.67 mm to 0.82 mm,the maximum angle error decreased from 0.481° to 0.167°,and the posture alignment precision of the aircraft wing end was improved.

Fatty acid fouling of forward osmosis membrane:Effects of pH,calcium,membrane orientation,initial permeate flux and foulant composition

Octanoic acid（OA） was selected to represent fatty acids in effluent organic matter（EOM）. The effects of feed solution（FS） properties, membrane orientation and initial permeate flux on OA fouling in forward osmosis（FO） were investigated. The undissociated OA formed a cake layer quickly and caused the water flux to decline significantly in the initial 0.5 hr at unadjusted p H 3.56; while the fully dissociated OA behaved as an anionic surfactant and promoted the water permeation at an elevated p H of 9.00. Moreover, except at the initial stage, the sudden decline of water flux（meaning the occurrence of severe membrane fouling） occurred in two conditions： 1.0.5 mmol/L Ca2＋, active layer facing draw solution（AL-DS） and 1.5 mol/L Na Cl（DS）; 2. No Ca2＋,active layer-facing FS（AL-FS） and 4 mol/L Na Cl（DS）. This demonstrated that cake layer compaction or pore blocking occurred only when enough foulants were absorbed into the membrane surface, and the water permeation was high enough to compact the deposit inside the porous substrate. Furthermore, bovine serum albumin（BSA） was selected as a co-foulant.The water flux of both co-foulants was between the fluxes obtained separately for the two foulants at p H 3.56, and larger than the two values at p H 9.00. This manifested that, at p H 3.56,BSA alleviated the effect of the cake layer caused by OA, and OA enhanced BSA fouling simultaneously; while at p H 9.00, the mutual effects of OA and BSA eased the membrane fouling.