Ion-exchange membranes (IEMs) are unique in combining the electrochemical properties of ion exchange resins and the permeability of a membrane. They are being used widely to treat industrial effluents, and in seawater and brackish water desalination. Membrane Capacitive Deionisation (MCDI) is an emerging, energy efficient technology for brackish water desalination in which these ion-exchange me...

Fresh water is required to sustain life. However, the world is facing a global challenge to reliably supply its population with safe water due to shortages stemming from population growth, climate change, contamination of available fresh water supplies, and public policy. Presently, the United Nations estimates that one third of the world’s population ( 2.4 billion people) is living in water-st...

Numerous engineered and natural environments suffer deleterious effects from biofouling and/or biofilm formation. For instance, bacterial contamination on biomedical devices pose serious health concerns. In membrane-based technologies, such as desalination and wastewater reuse, biofouling decreases membrane lifetime, and increases the energy required to produce clean water. Traditionally, appro...

Large-scale desalination plants are complex systems with many inter-disciplinary interactions and different levels of subsystem hierarchy. Advanced complex systems design tools have been shown to have a positive impact on design in aerospace and automotive, but have generally not been used in the design of water systems. This work presents a multi-disciplinary design optimization approach to de...

The environmental issues of possible concern during construction and operation of desalination plants (mainly large-scale facilities) include impacts that are common to many coastal development projects (e.g. land use and aesthetic impacts), as well as specific impacts associated with the elements of the desalination system and auxiliary infrastructure. In the latter category these relate to th...

abstract aims: one of the consequences of taking ground water into surface is changing its chemical quality, specially increasing the concentration of dissolved salts. this research was performed in order to analyze growth possibility of heterotrophic bacteria in the membrane of active desalination plants in kashan city, iran. instrument & methods: this descriptive cross-sectional study was don...