In recent years, membrane separation processes have successfully established footholds in all areas of chemical separations. Semipermeable membranes are now enhancing and even replacing long-time standard techniques such as distillation and solvent extraction (1). They are also being used in the preparation of purified chemical and biological products as well as the treatment and recovery of ma...

Seawater desalination, the desalination of waters flowing back from hydraulic fracturing processes and brackish water desalination constitute important desalination applications. These have a combined market size in excess of $25 billion per annum and a combined water production rate equivalent to the domestic consumption of over 300 million people. Each application offers its own distinct chal...

Service experience from 27 seawater reverse osmosis (SWRO) plants confirms that there is an evident risk of corrosion if wrong steel grade is used for the high pressure piping. Neither 316L nor 317L possesses sufficient corrosion resistance. Not even highly alloyed grades like 2205 and 904L show reliable service performance. However, no corrosion has been reported for 254 SMO, which has been us...

At low pressure and temperature, water is easily vaporized under partial vacuum pressure. Desalination of seawater as source of potable water is globally considered as an applied reliable technology. At low temperature and pressure, the heat transfer process yield is higher than any normal process. Therefore, the rate of vaporization of seawater is much higher than any usual processes. The part...

With an increase in demand of freshwater and depleting water sources, it is imperative to switch to seawater as a regular source of water supply. However, due to the high total dissolved solid content, it has to be desalinated to make it drinkable. While desalination technologies have been used for many years, mass deployment of such technologies poses a number of challenges like high energy re...

Forward osmosis (FO) is an emerging water treatment technology with potential applications in desalination and wastewater reclamation. In FO, water is extracted from a feed solution using the high osmotic pressure of a hypertonic solution that flows on the opposite side of a semipermeable membrane; however, solutes diffuse simultaneously through the membrane in both directions and may jeopardiz...

Forward osmosis (FO) is a promising membrane technology to combine seawater desalination and water reuse. More specifically, in a FO-reverse osmosis (RO) hybrid process, high quality water recovered from the wastewater stream is used to dilute seawater before RO treatment. As such, lower desalination energy needs and/or water augmentation can be obtained while delivering safe water for direct p...

Reverse osmosis membrane (RO) is becoming a most popular instrument to desalinate seawater as a result of new developments in membrane technology. The critical factor governing successful long-term reverse osmosis (RO) in desalination plants is fouling caused by the turbidity of seawater, such as by suspended solids, sparingly soluble salts, or biological growth. To reduce the turbidity, the se...