Fouling mitigation in forward osmosis and membrane distillation for desalination

Fouling distribution in forward osmosis membrane process.

Fouling behavior along the length of membrane module was systematically investigated by performing simple modeling and lab-scale experiments of forward osmosis (FO) membrane process. The flux distribution model developed in this study showed a good agreement with experimental results, validating the robustness of the model. This model demonstrated, as expected, that the permeate flux decreased ...

Forward osmosis membrane fouling and cleaning for wastewater reuse

Membrane fouling properties and different physical cleaning methods for forward osmosis (FO) and reverse osmosis (RO) laboratory-scale filtration systems were investigated. The membrane fouling, with respect to flux reduction, was lower in FO than in RO when testing an activated sludge effluent. Crossflow velocity, air-scouring, osmotic backwashing and effect of a spacer were compared to determ...

Membrane Distillation for Water Recovery and Its Fouling Phenomena

The total volume of water on Earth is circa 300 million cubic miles, with close to 98.0% being salt water and the remaining 2.0% fresh water. It has been increasingly more challenging to harvest fresh water from surface water, seawater and even from wastewater due to the combination of factors, viz. burgeoning population growth, rapid industrialization and climate change. Recently, membrane dis...

A Short Review of Membrane Fouling in Forward Osmosis Processes

Interest in forward osmosis (FO) research has rapidly increased in the last decade due to problems of water and energy scarcity. FO processes have been used in many applications, including wastewater reclamation, desalination, energy production, fertigation, and food and pharmaceutical processing. However, the inherent disadvantages of FO, such as lower permeate water flux compared to pressure ...

Desalination by Membrane Distillation