Reverse osmosis (RO) membrane desalting is a leading technology for the production of potable water from saline water. Water production cost in a typical RO desalination plant consists of the cost of energy, equipment, membranes, labor, maintenance, chemicals, brine management, and financial charges. The energy consumption per volume of produced pe...

An experimental optimization-based control strategy was developed and experimentally implemented on a reverse osmosis (RO) membrane desalination system. First, a dynamic non-linear model of the system was derived using mass and energy balances. Next, this model was combined with a model for system specific energy consumption. After the model parame...

RO desalination of brackish water in the San Joaquin Valley may be feasible only at high recoveries that may be achieved through the use of a two-stage RO process with inter-stage demineralization of scale precursors. In the present work, the concentrated brine from a pilot RO system operating in the San Joaquin Valley was demineralized by seeded g...

Only a very short abstract was provided; not enough to develop a summary!...

High recovery Reverse osmosis (RO) membrane desalination of inland brackish water sources has been pursued in various regions of the world as a potential approach to generating new water supplies. However, high recovery membrane desalination is often limited by membrane mineral scaling of sparingly soluble mineral salts. Membrane mineral scaling si...

A new RO rapid desalting evaluation system is used to demonstrate performance of RO membranes for treatment of inland water. A unique mini module system combined with an external scale monitor allows for rapid detection of scale formation. The pretreatment scheme was then adjusted to optimize antiscalant dosage and RO performace was measured. This ...

Both biofilm and inorganic scale adversely effect RO membrane performance. This study evaluates the kinetics of qypsum crystallization in the presence of a biofilm. The presence of the biofilm wass shown to accelerate the formation of the gypsum scale on the membrane....

Thin-film composite polyamide membrane has been the dominant membrane used for reverse osmosis and nanofiltration since its development by Cadotte and co-workers. However, in inland brackish water desalination (including desalting of treated municipal wastewater), fouling (due to both inorganic salt scaling and organic fouling) of RO/NF membranes p...

Increased use of engineerd nanomaterials (ENMs) will result in a corresponding increas in surface waters. This study evaluates chemical pretreatment followed by sedimentations and membrane filtration for optimum removal performance. A variety of chemical coagulants were evaluated at different pH levels to identify maximum removal of the ENMs....

This paper describes an in-depth investigation of a steel companies waste water by looking at the feed water quality including size fractionation and chemical analyses of feed water constituents, bench scale fouling and scaling studies while applying some proprietary geochemical and RO process modeling tools. From these analyses, they were able ...

Quorom sensing inhibitors regulate biofilm development in seawater RO systems....

Quorum sensing (QS) pathways regulate bacterial communication to trigger biofilm development, the main cause of membrane biofouling. Recent studies identified the integral role of QS inhibiting (QSI) compounds to disrupt QS pathways and ultimately reduce biofilm production. In this research, vanillin and cinnamaldehyde, both known QSIs were physica...

We have developed a method of membrane fabrication for the development of membranes for high performance applications that addresses common challenges across the membrane industry. When using common phase inversion and interfacial polymerization fabrication techniques, nearly all properties of the membrane are affected. Modifying the solvent/anti-s...

Herein, we evaluate the performance (i.e., flux and rejection) of commercially-available, thin film composite brackish water RO (BWRO), seawater RO (SWRO) and high-pressure RO (HPRO) membranes operating at pressures from 14 bar (200 psi) to 207 bar (3,000 psi). For each membrane material, we elucidate the impacts to performance using a porous metal...

Herein, we evaluate the performance (i.e., flux and rejection) of commercially-available, thin film composite brackish water RO (BWRO), seawater RO (SWRO) and high-pressure RO (HPRO) membranes operating at pressures from 14 bar (200 psi) to 207 bar (3,000 psi). For each membrane material, we elucidate the impacts to performance using a porous metal...