The purpose of this study was to determine the comparative environmental impacts of coupled seawater desalination and water reclamation using a novel hybrid system that consist of an osmotically driven membrane process and established membrane desalination technologies. A comparative life cycle assessment methodology was used to differentiate between a novel hybrid process consisting of forward...

A novel osmotic membrane bioreactor (OsMBR) is presented. The system utilizes a submerged forward osmosis (FO) membrane module inside a bioreactor. Through osmosis, water is transported from the mixed liquor across a semi-permeable membrane, and into a draw solution (DS) with a higher osmotic pressure. To produce potable water, the diluted DS is treated in a reverse osmosis (RO) unit; the by-pr...

Osmosis is the key process in establishing versatile functions of cellular systems and enabling clean-water harvesting technologies. Membranes with single-atom thickness not only hold great promises in approaching the ultimate limit of these functions, but also offer an ideal test-bed to explore the underlying physical mechanisms. In this work, we explore diffusive and osmotic transport of wate...

Reverse osmosis (RO) has been widely applied in various water and wastewater treatment processes as a promising membrane technology. However, RO membrane fouling is a global issue, which limits it operating flux, decreases water production, increases power consumption and requires periodical membranes Cleaning-in-Place (CIP) procedure. This may result in low effectiveness, high cost and adds en...

A versatile method was developed for the quantitative analysis of semi-volatile linear aliphatic hydrocarbons in the n-C10 to n-C32 range and 16 polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) in hydraulic fracturing wastewaters using solid-phase extraction (SPE) on disposable octadecyl-bonded silica (C18) cartridges followed by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry. Matrix spikes revealed SPE recovery r...

Fertiliser-drawn forward osmosis (FDFO) desalination has been recently studied as one feasible application of forward osmosis (FO) for irrigation. In this study, the potential of membrane scaling in the FDFO process has been investigated during the desalination of brackish groundwater (BGW). While most fertilisers containing monovalent ions did not result in any scaling when used as an FO draw ...