Abstract
Pressure-assisted osmosis (PAO) has been suggested to integrate with fertiliser driven forward osmosis (FDFO) to improve the overall efficiency of simultaneous wastewater reuse and fertiliser osmotic dilution. This study aims to demonstrate the techno-economic feasibility of pressure-assisted fertiliser driven forward osmosis (PAFDO) hybrid system compared to the existing ultraviolet and reverse osmosis (UVRO) process. The results showed that coupling FDFO with PAO (i.e. PAFDO) could help fulfill the water quality required for greenwall fertigation. An economic analysis on capital and operational costs for the PAFDO showed that the PAO mode application at a lower FDFO dilution stage could significantly reduce the costs. However, when considering the different applied pressures in PAO (i.e. 2, 4, and 6 bar), the increase in the total water cost was not significant. This indicates that the dilution stage for applying PAO is more sensitive to the total water cost of the PAFDO than the applied pressure. A coupling of higher average water flux (>10 L/m2h) and lower draw solution (DS) dilution factor (DF < 60) is recommended. Therefore, this could make the PAFDO system economically viable compared to the benchmark for the UV-RO disinfection system.
Highlights
The world population is projected to cross 9 billion by 2050 (Diaz et al 2017)
The result shows that PO43, Mg2+ and SO42- had specific reverse solute flux (SRSF) comparatively much lower than K+, NO3- and NH4+, which can be explained by their larger hydrated radius and lower reverse diffusion toward the FS
Techno-economic analyses were conducted for a fertiliser driven forward osmosis process for commercial fertiliser dilution by biologically treated urban wastewater to produce irrigation water
Summary
The world population is projected to cross 9 billion by 2050 (Diaz et al 2017). The rapid population growth coupled with climate change and urbanization have placed an increasing demand for limited potable water resources throughout the world. As the agricultural sector accounts for around 70 % of the world freshwater consumption (Wisser et al 2008), food production may soon be hindered by water availability. Reverse osmosis (RO) process has worldwide attention in both wastewater reclamation and desalination mainly due to the development of good performance membranes and its lower environmental impact compared to the thermal technologies (Al-Obaidi et al 2017, Bunani et al 2015). A recent study investigated the performances of two different types of RO membranes in removal of various dissolved species in secondary effluent stream and showed that the quality of the RO permeates is suitable for agricultural irrigation (Bunani et al 2015)
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