Modeling the effect of spacers and biofouling on forward osmosis performance

الموضوعات

علوم تطبيقية وتكنولوجية

الملخص

Currently, the most utilized desalination technology is reverse osmosis (RO), where a membrane is used as a physical barrier to separate the salts from the seawater, using high hydraulic pressure as driving force. A major problem in RO systems is biofouling, caused by severe growth of bacterial biofilms. Both, the need of an external energy input, as well as biofouling, impose a high cost on RO operation.Forward osmosis (FO) is an alternative membrane process that uses an osmotic pressure difference as driving force. FO uses a concentrated draw solution to generate high osmotic pressure, which extracts water across a semi permeable membrane from a feed solution. One of the main advantages of FO is the limited amount of external energy required to extract water from the feed solution.The objective of this research is the assessment of the impact of spacers, separating the membrane sheets, and biofouling on the FO system performance. This type of studies allow the optimization of membrane devices and operational conditions. For this, a two dimensional numerical model for FO systems was developed using computational fluid dynamics (CFD). This model allowed the evaluation of the impact of (i) spacers and (ii) biofilm, and (iii) the combined impact of spacers and biofilm on the performance of FO systems. The results obtained showed that the presence of spacers improved the performance of FO systems. Cavity configuration spacer gave the higher water flux across the membrane in clean systems; whereas for biofouled systems, the submerged configuration showed a better performance. In absence of spacers, the thickness or amount of biofilm is inversely proportional with the water flux. Furthermore, membrane surface coverage of the biofilm is more important than the amount of biofilm in terms of the impact on the performance.The numerical model can be adapted with other parameters (e.g. membrane and spacer thickness, feed and draw solution, solution concentration, etc.) to predict the impact of biofilm on FO systems under different experimental conditions. The use of numerical modeling may contribute to faster development of economic viable FO based desalination systems.

روابط وملفات

التعريف والنوع

رقم الوثيقة

fda0857c-634c-4f92-bcee-7e00b746791b

رقم العقد

0

نوع الوسائط

Crawler

نوع المحتوى

الرسائل العلمية

صيغة المصدر

رسائل ماجيستير

نوع الملف

pdf text

أسماء الملفات

1700276_1.pdf

بيانات النشر

ألقاب المؤلفين

[{"name_ar":"María José","title_ar":"اعداد","title_en":"Preparation"},{"name_ar":"Saikaly, Pascal E.","title_ar":"اشراف","title_en":"Supervision"}]

اللغة

English

المصدر والدورية

اسم المصدر

Modeling the effect of spacers and biofouling on forward osmosis performance

المحتوى والصفحات

عدد الصفحات

0

كلمات الباحثين

Biofilm , Biofouling , Forward Osmosis

إشراف وإعداد

الإشراف

Saikaly, Pascal E.

الإعداد

María José

الاقتباسات الببليوغرافية