Effect of draw solution type and operational mode of forward osmosis with laboratory-scale membranes and a spiral wound membrane module

Abstract

Forward osmosis (FO) is a concentration driven membrane process which recently gained an increase in attention due to the development of improved FO membranes. Most of the currently available data on FO research is obtained on small laboratory-scale set-ups, thereby overlooking the effects of scaling-up to pilot or full-scale size. In this paper, FO experiments are carried out with a 10.16 cm (4-in) spiral wound FO (SWFO) Hydration Technologies Innovations (HTI) module. The performance of the SWFO module was investigated during daily experiments and the influence of two types of draw solutions (NaCl and MgCl2) was evaluated and compared to data from lab-scale FO research. Furthermore, the difference between fixed draw solution concentration and draw solution dilution was studied for both draw solutions. Salt flux was determined from the increase in: (i) conductivity; and (ii) individual ion concentration in the feed vessel. Water and salt flux values from laboratory-scale membrane FO experiments were similar but slightly lower than that of the SWFO module in the fixed draw solution concentration experiments (respectively 5 L/m2h and 3 g/m2h for 0.5 M NaCl). Salt flux values obtained from individual ion measurements were lower and more accurate compared to that determined by conductivity measurements.