Coupled Effects of Salt Concentration Polarization and Colloidal Deposition on the Performance of Reverse Osmosis Membranes

The shrinking water supply together with our continuously increasing demand for this resource has stimulated a renewed interest in reverse osmosis (RO) as a water treatment unit process. A wider use of RO membranes, however, is impeded by a group of phenomena that lead to permeate flux decline, deterioration of permeate water quality, shortening of membrane life, and thus to a substantial increase in operational costs [1, 2]. The relevant physicochemical phenomena include concentration polarization, scaling, adsorptive and biological fouling, and colloidal fouling.