Abstract: RO membrane fouling is one of the main challenges that membrane manufactures, the scientific community and industry professionals have to deal with. The consequences of this inevitable phenomenon have a negative effect on the performance of the desalination system. Predicting fouling in RO systems is key to evaluating the long-term operating conditions and costs. Much research has bee...

The overarching goal of this research project is to develop technologies for beneficial salinity management. Specifically, the project focuses on the energy and resources recovery from reverse osmosis (RO) desalination concentration, which can reduce the cost associated with desalination operation and minimize the environmental impact associated with the disposal of desalination concentrate. Th...

Reverse Osmosis (RO) membrane fouling is one of the main challenges that membrane manufactures, the scientific community and industry professionals have to deal with. The consequences of this inevitable phenomenon have a negative effect on the performance of the desalination system. Predicting fouling in RO systems is key to evaluating the long-term operating conditions and costs. Much research...

This paper summarizes a study of the economic and environmental performance of Reverse Osmosis (RO) desalination powered mainly with photovoltaics. It is based on up-to-date cost data for photovoltaic power plants and RO desalination plants. A case study is presented of a plant producing 6550 m water per day on the coast of the Red Sea in Saudi Arabia powered by 3-MWdc PV or HCPV capacities. We...

Multiple Effect Distillation (MED) is generally considered to be the desalination technology most suited to integration with concentrating solar thermal collectors on a medium to large scale. However the cost and energy requirement of Reverse Osmosis (RO) have fallen significantly in recent years, so that solar thermal powered RO deserves consideration. We compare commercial desalination proces...

The mining industry is facing problems of clean production in terms of mineral processing, pollution, water consumption, and renewable energy. An interesting outlook can be to combine the mining industry with membrane-based desalination in the logic of mining from the sea. In fact, several of the drawbacks found in both mining and desalination can be minimized or overcome, which includes hinder...

The occurrence and intensity of harmful algal blooms (HABs) have been increasing globally during the past few decades. The impact of these events on seawater desalination facilities has become an important topic in recent years due to enhanced societal interest and reliance on this technology for augmenting world water supplies. A variety of harmful bloom-forming species of microalgae occur in ...

The paper presents an attempt to assess sustainability of desalination plants for water production based on resource, environmental and economic indicators. Four types of desalination plants are taken into a consideration: single MSF, dual purpose MSF, RO with local energy consumption and RO with PV electric energy production. The analysis is based on data from desalination plants in Gulf count...

While single-layer nanoporous graphene (NPG) has shown promise as a reverse osmosis (RO) desalination membrane, multilayer graphene membranes can be synthesized more economically than the single-layer material. In this work, we build upon the knowledge gained to date toward single-layer graphene to explore how multilayer NPG might serve as a RO membrane in water desalination using classical mol...

Recent advances in the development of nanoporous graphene (NPG) hold promise for the future of water supply by reverse osmosis (RO) desalination. But while previous studies have highlighted the potential of NPG as an RO membrane, there is less understanding as to whether NPG is strong enough to maintain its mechanical integrity under the high hydraulic pressures inherent to the RO desalination ...