Impacts of Climate Change on Seawater Temperature and Total Dissolved Solids: Challenges and Sustainable Solutions for Reverse Osmosis Desalination in the Arabian Gulf Region

This article examines the influence of seawater temperature and total dissolved solids (TDS) on reverse osmosis (RO) desalination in the Arabian Gulf region, with a focus on the impact of climate change. The study highlights the changes in seawater temperature and TDS levels over the years and discusses their effects on the efficiency and productivity of RO desalination plants. It emphasizes the importance of monitoring TDS levels and controlling seawater temperature to optimize water production. The article also suggests various solutions, including intensive pre-treatment, development of high-performance membranes, exploration of alternative water sources, and regulation of discharges into the Gulf, to ensure sustainable water supply in the face of rising TDS levels and seawater temperature. Further research and comprehensive monitoring are recommended to understand the implications of these findings and develop effective strategies for the management of marine resources in the Arabian Gulf.

Performance of Nanofiltration (NF) and Low Pressure Reverse Osmosis (LPRO) Membranes in the Removal of Fluorine and Salinity from Brackish Drinking Water

Certain areas in Senegal have a serious problem of high fluoride and salinity in underground water because of soil properties. This water currently used for drink has a bad taste on consumption and caused diseases like dental fluorosis and skeletal fluorosis. A membrane filtration plant constructed by Pall Corporation was improved through nanofiltration (NF) and Low Pressure Reverse Osmosis (LPRO). Both NF and LPRO membranes were shown applicable for salinity and fluoride ions removal from brackish and high fluorinated drinking water in a remote community. The NF membrane has given a fluorine retention rate varying between 63.3% and 71% while the LPRO membrane allow to reach 97 to 98.9% for fluorine rejection. Highest salinity rejection rates expressed through conductivity measurements are around 46% and 97% for respectively NF and LPRO.

Research Progress of Brackish Water Desalination by Reverse Osmosis

Brackish water (BW) desalination is a primary path to relieve the shortage of water. As one of the BW desalination methods, reverse osmosis (RO) technology has advantage for both technology and process procedure. The expounding of this research studied or reviewed recent years, reverse osmosis membrane, energy recovery, new energy and application technology in BW desalination of RO at home and abroad. Wind power and solar energy can be combined with energy recovery device for RO. The research also explains that BW desalination by RO is practical and feasible in some areas in China.

A Pilot-scale Demonstration of Reverse Osmosis Unit for Treatment of Coal-bed Methane Co-produced Water and Its Modeling

This study presents the first demonstration project in China for treatment of coal-bed methane(CBM) co-produced water and recycling.The work aims to provide a research and innovation base for solving the pollution problem of CBM extraction water.The reverse osmosis(RO) unit is applied to the treatment of CBM co-produced water.The results indicate that system operation is stable,the removal efficiency of the total dissolved solids(TDS) is as high as 97.98%,and Fe,Mn,and F-are almost completely removed.There is no suspended solids(SS) detected in the treated water.Furthermore,a model for the RO membrane separation process is developed to describe the quantitative relationship between key physical quantities-membrane length,flow velocity,salt concentration,driving pressure and water recovery rate,and the water recovery restriction equation based on mass balance is developed.This model provides a theoretical support for the RO system design and optimization.The TDS in the CBM co-produced water are removed to meet the "drinking water standards" and "groundwater quality standards" of China and can be used as drinking water,irrigation water,and livestock watering.In addition,the cost for treatment of CBM co-produced water is assessed,and the RO technology is an efficient and cost-effective treatment method to remove pollutants.

Deep Learning Based Model Predictive Control for a Reverse Osmosis Desalination Plant

Reverse Osmosis (RO) desalination plants are highly nonlinear multi-input-multioutput systems that are affected by uncertainties, constraints and some physical phenomena such as membrane fouling that are mathematically difficult to describe. Such systems require effective control strategies that take these effects into account. Such a control strategy is the nonlinear model predictive (NMPC) controller. However, an NMPC depends very much on the accuracy of the internal model used for prediction in order to maintain feasible operating conditions of the RO desalination plant. Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs), especially the Long-Short-Term Memory (LSTM) can capture complex nonlinear dynamic behavior and provide long-range predictions even in the presence of disturbances. Therefore, in this paper an NMPC for a RO desalination plant that utilizes an LSTM as the predictive model will be presented. It will be tested to maintain a given permeate flow rate and keep the permeate concentration under a certain limit by manipulating the feed pressure. Results show a good performance of the system.

Microbial Removal from Secondary Treated Wastewater Using a Hybrid System of Ultrafiltration and Reverse Osmosis

The efficiency of advanced membranes towards removal of general and specific microbes from wastewater was investigated. The treatment included a subsequent system of activated sludge, ultrafiltration （hollow fibre membranes with 100 kDa cut-off, and spiral wound membranes with 20 kDa cut-off）, and RO （reverse osmosis）. The removal evaluation of screened microbes present in treated wastewater showed that hollow fibre membrane rejected only 1 log （90% rejection） of the TPC （total microbial count）, TC （total coliforms）, and FC （faecal coliforms）. A higher effectiveness was observed with spiral wound, removing 2-3 logs （99%-99.9%） of TPC and complete rejection of TC and FC. The RO system was successful in total rejection of all received bacteria. The removal evaluation of inoculated specific types of bacteria showed that the hollow membranes removed 2 logs （99%） of inoculated E. coli （10^7-10^8 cfu/mL inoculum）, 2-3 logs （99%-99.9%） of Enterococus spp. （10^7-10^10 cfu/mL inoculum）, 1-2 logs （90%-99%） of Salmonella （10^8-10^10 cfu/mL inoculum） and 1-2 logs （90%-99%） of Shigella （10^5-10^6 cfu/mL inoculum）. The spiral wound was significantly efficient in rejecting further 3 logs of E. coil, 5 logs of Enterococus spp., 4 logs of Salmonella, and a complete rejection of all received bacteria was accomplished by RO membrane. The results indicate that Gram positive bacteria were removed much more efficiently compared to the Gram negative ones, the rationale behind such behaviour is based on cell walls elasticity.

Application of Activated Carbon in the Removal of COD in Zero-emission Reverse Osmosis Concentrate

For further reducing the load of subsequent processing,the activated carbon adsorption method was used to remove organic compounds from reverse osmosis water concentrate,and the influence of variety of activated carbon,residence time,dosage of activated carbon and p H on the removal rate of COD was studied.The results show that the removal rate of COD was up to 61.8%under the conditions of influent p H=6,400 ml water,30 min of residence time and 1.5 g of 2#activated carbon as the adsorbent.In the dynamic adsorption experiment and field application,the adsorption tower was loaded with 40 tons of 2#activated carbon,and the inflow of influent water was 100 m^3/h;average COD was 142 mg/L,and p H was 8.04;the residence time was 36 min.Under the above conditions,when effluent COD was less than 60 mg/L,the adsorption capacity of activated carbon was up to 1330 m^3/t.

Highly permeable reverse osmosis membranes incorporated with hydrophilic polymers of intrinsic microporosity via interfacial polymerization

Enhancing the water permeation while maintaining high salt rejection of existing reverse osmosis(RO)membranes remains a considerable challenge.Herein,we proposed to introduce polymer of intrinsic microporosity,PIM-1,into the selective layer of reverse osmosis membranes to break the trade-off effect between permeability and selectivity.A water-soluble a-LPIM-1 of low-molecular-weight and hydroxyl terminals was synthesized.These designed characteristics endowed it with high solubility and reactivity.Then it was mixed with m-phenylenediamine and together served as aqueous monomer to react with organic monomer of trimesoyl chloride via interfacial polymerization.The characterization results exhibited that more“nodule”rather than“leaf”structure formed on RO membrane surface,which indicated that the introduction of the high free-volume of a-LPIM-1 with three dimensional twisted and folded structure into the selective layer effectively caused the frustrated packing between polymer chains.In virtue of this effect,even with reduced surface roughness and unchanged layer thickness,the water permeability of prepared reverse osmosis membranes increased 2.1 times to 62.8 L·m^(-2)·h^(-1) with acceptable Na Cl rejection of 97.6%.This attempt developed a new strategy to break the trade-off effect faced by traditional polyamide reverse osmosis membranes.

An Air Operated Domestic Brackish Water Reverse Osmosis Plant: Economically Sustainable Solution for Safe Drinking Water Supply for Chronic Kidney Disease of Unknown Etiology Affected Areas in Sri Lanka

Chronic Kidney Disease with unknown etiology (CKDu) is one of the crucial health issues in North Central, Uva, North Western, North, Central, and Eastern Provinces of Sri Lanka and incapacitates the kidney function. The main source for the CKDu has not yet been identified, though many scientists believed that the number of certain drinking water quality parameters is changed due to the contamination of water sources by agricultural activities. Hence, the government of Sri Lanka introduces electrically driven Brackish Water Reverse Osmosis (BWRO) plants with a capacity of 10 tones/day to supply safe drinking water for the impacted community though it is an energy-intensive process. Concurrently, a smaller version of an electrically driven BWRO plant was introduced to the rural farming community for their domestic use. However, it was not practically worked out due to various reasons such as high cost, unavailability of electrical power supply for those villages. In this study, an economical air operated domestic use BWRO plant with zero-emission was designed. This anticipated system significantly reduces the government expenditures to subsidize the water purification cost by 50% of the existing expenses. Besides, simple payback time was found to be 2.5 years, and the benefit-cost ratio to be more than 1. Evaluating the performance with the conventional values, it comprehends with more sustainable and economically viable system compared to the existing method of water purification.

Piloting Study on Biofouling Control of Reverse Osmosis System in Steel Mill Wastewater Reuse

The biofouling of RO （Reverse Osmosis） system is one of the most common problems in highly contaminated demineralization and wastewater reuse system. The biological fouling occurs due to the bacteria growth and proliferation under nutritive environment, resulting in a dramatic increase of dP （differential pressure） in the RO system, which requires frequent system shutdown for cleaning. This paper discusses the effectiveness of low-dP RO element and periodic flushing on the biofouling scheme of industrial steel mill wastewater reuse system. The low-dP RO element is able to provide low RO system dP, which is expressed to be lower biofouling starting point during the industrial system operation. However, the periodic flushing utilizes fresh water to remove the biofilm deposit along with feed channel. The long term operation performance demonstrated strong caustic is effective in removing the biofilm and recovering RO system performance. It is experimentally validated that, in the case of a high biofouling environment, low-dP RO element and periodic flushing is able to extend the cleaning cycles by 36.6% and 11.4%, respectively. Meanwhile, a joint application of both methods is proven to improve the biofouling control and extend the cleaning cycle by 62.5%, as compared to standard RO technology.

Design and Operation of Small-Scale Photovoltaic-Driven Reverse Osmosis (PV-RO) Desalination Plant for Water Supply in Rural Areas

The alarming water and energy crisis in many regions of the world can be eased by combining renewable energy with desalination technologies. The ADIRA project funded by the EU looked for demonstrating the feasibility of water desalination in areas around the Mediterranean by installing a number of autonomous desalination systems (ADS) which are able to convert brackish or seawater into potable water for the needs of small communities. Within the activities of the ADIRA project a reverse osmosis unit powered by photovoltaic electricity was installed in a village in the northern part of Jordan with a capacity of 0.5 m3/day. The system was composed of a softener, reverse osmosis unit, PV panels (432 Wp) and storage batteries. Residential type “OSMONICS” membrane (TFM-100) was utilized in the RO unit. Field tests were performed on brackish water (1700 mg/L total dissolved solids (TDS)). This paper sheds the light on the process flow diagram, sizing of the system main components and presents some of the results obtained.

Optimizing Reverse Osmosis Membrane Parameters through the Use of the Solution-Diffusion Model: A Review

When designing and building an optimal reverse osmosis (RO) desalination plant, it is important that engineers select effective membrane parameters for optimal application performance. The membrane selection can determine the success or failure of the entire desalination operation. The objective of this work is to review available membrane types and design parameters that can be selected for optimal application to yield the highest potential for plant operations. Factors such as osmotic pressure, water flux values, and membrane resistance will all be evaluated as functions of membrane parameters. The optimization of these parameters will be determined through the deployment of the solution-diffusion model devolved from the Maxwell Stephan Equation. When applying the solution-diffusion model to evaluate RO membranes, the Maxwell Stephan Equation provides mathematical analysis through which the steps for mass transfer through a RO membrane may be observed and calculated. A practical study of the use of the solution-diffusion model will be discussed. This study uses the diffusion-solution model to evaluate the effectiveness of a variety of Toray RO membranes. This practical application confirms two principal hypotheses when using the diffusion-solution model for membrane evaluation. First, there is an inverse relationship between membrane and water flux rate. Second, there is a proportional linear relationship between overall water flux rate and the applied pressure across a membrane.

Improvement of PV/T Based Reverse Osmosis Desalination Plant Performances Using Fuzzy Logic Controller

Photovoltaic based reverse osmosis desalination systems (PV/RO) present an effective method of water desalination especially in remote areas. The increase of the feed water temperature leads to an amelioration of the plant performances. Photovoltaic Thermal Collector (PV/T) represents an ideal power source as it provides both electric and thermal energies for the reverse osmosis process. Nevertheless, PV/T based RO plants should be controlled in order to solve operation problems related to electrical efficiency, reverse osmosis membrane, produced water and the rejected salts. This paper suggests a fuzzy logic controller for the flow rate of the circulating fluid into the PV/T collectors so as to ameliorate the system performances. The designed controller has improved the PV/T field electrical efficiency and preserved the reverse osmosis membrane which upgrades the system productivity. LABVIEW software is used to simulate the controlled system and validate the effectiveness of the controller.

Performance of Nanofiltration and Reverse Osmosis Membranes in Metal Effluent Treatment

The performance of different nanofiltration （NF） and reverse osmosis （RO） membranes was studied in treating the toxic metal effluent from metallurgical industry. The characteristics and filtration behavior of the processes including the wastewater flux, salt rejection and ion rejection versus operating pressure were evaluated. Then the wastewater flux of RO membrane was compared with theoretical calculation using mass transfer models, and good consistency was observed. It was found that a high rejection rate more than 95% of metal ions and a low Chemical Oxygen Demand （COD） value of 10 mg·L^-1 in permeate could be achieved using the RO composite membrane, while the NF rejection of the salt could be up to 78.9% and the COD value in the permeate was 35 mg·L^-1. The results showed that the product water by both NF and RO desalination satisfied the State Reutilization Qualification, but NF would be more suitable for large-scale industrial practice, which offered significantly higher permeate flux at low operating pressure.

Substrate matters:The influences of substrate layers on the performances of thin-film composite reverse osmosis membranes

Thin-film composite(TFC) reverse osmosis(RO) membranes are playing the dominating role in desalination.Tremendous efforts have been put in the studies on the polyamide selective layers. However, the effect of the substrate layers is far less concerned. In this review, we summarize the works that consider the impacts of the substrates, including pore sizes, surface hydrophilicity, on the processes of interfacial polymerization and consequently on the morphologies of the active layers and on final RO performances of the composite membranes. All the works indicate that the pore sizes and surface hydrophilicity of the substrate evidently influence the RO performances of the composite membranes. Unfortunately, we find that the observations and understandings on the substrate effect are frequently varied from case to case because of the lack of substrates with uniform pores and surface chemistries. We suggest using track-etched membranes or anodized alumina membranes having relatively uniform pores and functionalizable pore walls as model substrates to elucidate the substrate effect.Moreover, we argue that homoporous membranes derived from block copolymers have the potential to be used as substrates for the large-scale production of high-performances TFC RO membranes.

Inhibition of CaCO_3 Scaling in Reverse Osmosis System by Zinc Ion

Scaling of reverse osmosis (RO) membrane surface is one of the main problems in desalination proc- esses. To mitigate scales, organic anti-scalants are often used. If the dosages of anti-scalants are reduced, by using other much cheaper scale inhibitors, RO running cost will decrease greatly. The present paper investigated the inhi- bition of CaCO3 precipitation by zinc ions in RO system. The results show that the zinc ion concentration of 2mg?L-1 was able to exert a marked suppression effect on both bulk precipitation of CaCO3 and on membrane scaling on waters of moderate hardness.

Study of reverse osmosis membranes fouling by inorganic salts and colloidal particles during seawater desalination

Fouling phenomenon is considered among the major reasons that cause significant increase of operating cost of desalination plants equipped with reverse osmosis(RO)membranes.This phenomenon is studied in the present work in the case of RO polyamide aromatic membranes using model seawater containing inorganic salts and colloidal compounds.Different solubility conditions of CaCO3 and CaSO4 were applied to study RO performances with and without colloid presence.During experiments,the membrane permeate fluxes were continuously monitored.Moreover,studies of chemical composition,structure,and morphology of the materials deposited on the membrane surface were conducted using energy dispersive microanalysis(EDS)X-ray diffraction and scanning electronic microscopy(SEM).Results show that in conditions of calcium carbonate oversaturation there is a reduction in the permeate flow of 11.2%due to fouling of the membrane by the precipitation of this compound.While in the same conditions of calcium sulphate oversaturation the reduction of the flow is 5%,so we can conclude that in conditions of oversaturation of both salts,calcium carbonate produces a greater fouling of the membrane that in its view causes greater decrease in the flow of permeate.All this based on the results of the test with both salts in oversaturated conditions.Resulting in the formation of calcite and gypsum crystals onto the membranes as XRD analyses stated.Additional presence of colloidal silica in those conditions intensifies strongly the fouling,leading until to 24.1%of permeate flux decrease.

Energy Recovery Device with a Fluid Switcher for Seawater Reverse Osmosis System

Energy recovery device （ERD） is an important part of the seawater reverse osmosis （SWRO） desalination system. There are principally two kinds of ERDs, the centrifugal type and the positive displacement （PD） type. The PD type is of extensive concern and is preferred in large-scale plants. In this article, an innovative fluid switcher was presented and a two-cylinder hydraulic energy recovery unit with a lab-scale fluid switcher was set up. Tap water was used as the working medium instead of the actual seawater and brine in SWRO desalination plants. Under steady state operating conditions, the experimental results were obtained on the variations of the pressure and flow rate to and from the energy recovery unit. The hydraulic recovery efficiency （En） of the energy recovery unit with the fluid switcher reached up to 76.83%.

Recent advances in nanofiltration,reverse osmosis membranes and their applications in biomedical separation field

In the face of human society's great requirements for health industry,and the much stricter safety and quality standards in the biomedical industry,the demand for advanced membrane separation technologies continues to rapidly grow in the world.Nanofiltration(NF)and reverse osmosis(RO)as the highefficient,low energy consumption,and environmental friendly membrane separation techniques,show great promise in the application of biomedical separation field.The chemical compositions,microstructures and surface properties of NF/RO membranes determine the separation accuracy,efficiency and operation cost in their applications.Accordingly,recent studies have focused on tuning the structures and tailoring the performance of NF/RO membranes via the design and synthesis of various advanced membrane materials,and exploring universal and convenient membrane preparation strategies,with the objective of promoting the better and faster development of NF/RO membrane separation technology in the biomedical separation field.This paper reviews the recent studies on the NF/RO membranes constructed with various materials,including the polymeric materials,different dimensional inorganic/organic nanomaterials,porous polymeric materials and metal coordination polymers,etc.Moreover,the influence of membrane chemical compositions,interior microstructures,and surface characteristics on the separation performance of NF/RO membranes,are comprehensively discussed.Subsequently,the applications of NF/RO membranes in biomedical separation field are systematically reported.Finally,the perspective for future challenges of NF/RO membrane separation techniques in this field is discussed.