Ionic polymer hydrogels with thermal responsive units are found to induce higher water permeation rates in the osmosis process, and higher water release rates under a combination of pressure and thermal stimuli. These hydrogels have the potential for use as draw agent in forward osmosis desalination.

The frontier of water treatment is being defined by hybrid approaches and thoughtful design integration. The use of increasingly sophisticated processes is driven by the need to treat dramatically impaired water supplies while maintaining low cost, high utilization, and high operational flexibility. Industrial wastewaters present an additional challenge, with increasing regulations and water sc...

The forward osmosis (FO) is an emerging technique for high quality concentration of liquid foods. Polyphenols are natural compounds with important health function in fruit and vegetable juice. In this study, the impacts membrane property, feed solution (FS) pH value, draw (DS) composition concentration, fouling on rejections 9 food polyphenols by FO were investigated. Polyphenol rejection was m...

We have previously reported the use of hydrogel particles as the draw agent for forward osmosis desalination. In the present work, the effects of draw agent, feed concentration and membrane on the process performance were systematically examined. Our results showed that the incorporation of carbon filler particles in polymer hydrogels led to enhanced swelling ratios of the draw agents and thus ...