Abstract
In recent times, membrane technology has proven to be a more favorable option in wastewater treatment processes. Membrane technologies are more advantageous than conventional technologies such as efficiency, space requirements, energy, quality of permeate, and technical skills requirements. The forward osmosis (FO) membrane process has been widely applied as one of the promising technologies in water and wastewater treatment. Forward osmosis uses the osmotic pressure difference induced by the solute concentration difference between the feed and draw solutions. The proces requires a semi-permeable membrane which has comparable rejection range in size of pollutants (1 nm and below). This chapter reviews the application of FO membrane process in wastewater treatment. It considers the advantages and the disadvantages of this process.
Highlights
Membrane separation processes are widely used in the last decade for industrial, commercial, and domestic activities such as water and wastewater treatment, energy-efficiency
In addition to fouling of membrane, concentration polarization has an impact on the water flux, at the support layer, which leads to the severity in internal concentration polarization (ICP)
The findings revealed that industrial wastewater containing more than 5 mg/L of Cr and more than 2 mg/L of Pb is not recommended for the osmotic membrane bioreactor (OMBR) due to poor sludge characteristics, and high membrane fouling (Figure 11) [150]
Summary
Membrane separation processes are widely used in the last decade for industrial, commercial, and domestic activities such as water and wastewater treatment, energy-efficiency. FO does have inherently disadvantages such as; reverse solute diffusion (RSD), lower flux, concentration polarization (CP), and membrane fouling. These obstacles oblige the developing new processes, synthesis of different membrane materials or modifications, and finding new draw solution (DS). This chapter is divided into two parts In this first part of chapter, basic principles of FO phenomenon, advantages and challenges of FO over conventional membrane processes are addressed by the literature review and scholarly articles. The second part of which states applications of FO process for wastewater remediation, and recent developments in FO process
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