Investigation of fouling behavior in novel centrifugal reverse osmosis process

Abstract

Water is a vital resource to all organisms on Earth, including humankind. Water comes in all sorts of forms. A vast percentage of the water on Earth cannot be used by humans. On top of which, only around 0.3% of Earth’s freshwater can be found in the surface waters such as lakes and rivers. Therefore, humans have to consider other alternatives for sources of freshwater. [1] Methods like Reverse Osmosis (RO) are essential for purifying non-potable water, especially seawater. [2,3] Though advancements in technology that have reduced energy consumption by 80% over 20 years [9], there is a potential alternative, which is Centrifugal Reverse Osmosis (CRO). CRO offers energy savings [11], increment of flux [12] and reduction in operating costs [13]. As previous studies did not cover the issue of membrane fouling in CRO, in this study, several tests are conducted to determine the effects of membrane fouling in CRO compared to conventional RO. Membrane fouling is a challenge that impacts the performance of the membrane and increases the operational costs. There are various types of membrane fouling, each with specific causes and effects on the membranes and operation costs [3,18,19,20]. After analysing the results from the experiments that were carried out, this study reinforced that CRO significantly reducing energy consumption, and eventually concludes that CRO shows promise over RO as it there is a reduction of membrane fouling which will potentially lower the operational costs and making it a very viable solution for addressing freshwater shortages in the future.