Abstract
In reverse osmosis seawater treatment process, membrane fouling can be mitigated by degrading organic pollutants present in the feed seawater. The present study evaluates the effectiveness of employing solar photocatalysis using TiO2/ZnO/H2O2 to pretreat reverse osmosis (RO) feed seawater under solar irradiation. Process optimisation and performance evaluation were undertaken using response surface methodology-desirability function and RSM integrated with genetic algorithm (RSM-GA). Statistical analysis was performed to determine the interactive relationships and main effects of input factors such as TiO2 dosage, H2O2 dosage, pH, reaction time and ZnO dosage. The performance evaluation was determined in terms of percentage removal of total organic carbon (TOC) and chemical oxygen demand (COD). The obtained optimum values using RSM-GA evaluation for TOC and COD removal were found to be 76.5% and 63.9%, respectively. The predicted RSM-GA results correspond well with the experimental results (TOC removal = 73.3%, COD removal = 61.2%). Utilization of renewable solar energy coupled with optimum utilisation of nanophotocatalysts enables this technique to be a unique treatment process for RO pretreatment of seawater and membrane fouling mitigation.
Highlights
Seawater is becoming an increasingly significant water source globally due to high stress on freshwater availability and contamination issues
The current study evaluates the effectiveness of employing solar photocatalysis of TiO2∕ZnO∕H2O2 process to pretreat reverse osmosis (RO) feed seawater under solar irradiation
Process optimization and performance evaluation were undertaken using response surface methodology-desirability function (RSM-DF) and RSM integrated with genetic algorithm (RSM-Genetic algorithm (GA)) approach
Summary
Seawater is becoming an increasingly significant water source globally due to high stress on freshwater availability and contamination issues. Based on lower installed capacity, seawater reverse osmosis (SWRO) surpasses all other thermal technologies like multi-stage flash (MSF) and multieffect distillation (MED) and dominates the global desalination scenario. Biofouling problem is very crucial in the Middle East region, where around 75% of RO membrane facilities are affected. This is the region where the most considerable amount of desalted water is produced in the world (Khedr 2011). If TOC of the seawater is less than 0.5 mg/L, the presence of microbial foulants is minimal, and the feed seawater has very low biofouling potential. For TOC values in the range of 0.5–2.0 mg/L, the RO feed seawater has moderate fouling potential.
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