The performance of membrane elements operating in a reverse osmosis system is affected by the feed water composition, feed temperature, feed pressure, and permeate recovery ratio. Membrane compaction and fouling also affect membrane performance. Performance at a given set of system operating parameters can be calculated from nominal membrane performance at reference test conditions. I. FEED WAT...

To control the quality of reverse osmosis (RO) product water and reduce operational costs and environmental impacts by increasing the system’s energy efficiency, it is necessary to identify the influence of process parameters on energy consumption and permeate water quality. This paper introduces a case study focused on the application of Design of Experiments (DOE) method in an industrial-scal...

High liquid entry pressure (LEP) is one of the desired characteristics of a membrane distillation (MD) membrane. Maintaining LEP above operating feed pressure conditions is critical to prevent permeate quality worsening by saline feed liquid passage through the membrane. Air gap membrane distillation experiments under controlled salinity and temperature operating conditions indicate that in add...

Zeolites are potentially a robust desalination alternative, as they are chemically stable and possess the essential properties needed to reject ions. Zeolite membranes could desalinate "challenging" waters, such as saline secondary effluent, without any substantial pre-treatment, due to the robust mechanical properties of ceramic membranes. A novel MFI-type zeolite membrane was developed on a t...

A wind-powered reverse osmosis membrane (wind-membrane) system without energy storage was tested using synthetic brackish water (2750 and 5500 mg/L NaCl) over a range of simulated wind speeds under both steady-state and fluctuating conditions. The parameters varied were: i) average wind speed from 3.7 (system start-up) to 8.7 m/s; ii) wind turbulence intensity from 0.0 (steady-state conditions)...

Water in many areas of Australia is scarce and of poor quality. In some areas high levels of treatment are required either due to contamination of waters or due to high salinity. Nanofiltration (NF) and low pressure RO membranes are well recognised technologies to treat waters of qualities ranging from low salinity surface water to high salinity seawater. In remote communities the operation of ...

Coastal utilities exploiting mildly saline groundwater (<150 mg/L chloride) may be challenged by disinfection byproduct (DBP) formation, a concern likely to increase with sea-level rise. Groundwater from North Carolina coastal aquifers is characterized by large variations in concentrations of halides (bromide up to 10,600 μg/L) and dissolved organic carbon (up to 5.7 mg-C/L). Formation of 33 re...

This study investigates the performance of an integrated osmotic and microfiltration membrane bioreactor (O/MF-MBR) system for wastewater treatment and reclamation. The O/MF-MBR system simultaneously used microfiltration (MF) and forward osmosis (FO) membranes to extract water from the mixed liquor of an aerobic bioreactor. The MF membrane facilitated the bleeding of dissolved inorganic salts a...

Abstract Microcoagulation has recently been considered as a promising pretreatment for an ultrafiltration (UF) process from numerous studies. To investigate the effects of microcoagulation on performance UF–reverse osmosis (RO) system treating wastewater with high and fluctuant salinity, different dosages coagulant (poly-aluminum chloride) were added prior to UF unit in pilot-scale UF–RO 10-wee...

Extensive research has focussed on the development of novel high retention membrane bioreactor (HR-MBR) systems for wastewater reclamation in recent years. HR-MBR integrates high rejection membrane separation with conventional biological treatment in a single step. High rejection membrane separation processes currently used in HR-MBR applications include nanofiltration, forward osmosis, and mem...