Pilot-scale nanofiltration system as post-treatment for fertilizer-drawn forward osmosis desalination for direct fertigation

Abstract

Abstract The integration of the fertilizer-drawn forward osmosis with nanofiltration (NF) has been investigated to evaluate the performance of NF process as a post-treatment. The primary objective of this study is to optimize the operating conditions such as feed flow rate and feed concentration, while producing fresh water including low nutrient (N) concentration can be directly used for irrigation. Investigation of operating parameters at the pilot-scale level focused on specific water flux and ammonium sulphate rejection. Results from this study showed that NF process applied as the post-treatment can effectively reject the N concentration more than 90%. Although other factors such as the applied pressure and the cross-flow rates played a certain role in the performance of the pilot-scale NF process, the influence of the feed concentration was more significant on the specific water flux and N rejection.