Water desalination and wastewater reuse using integrated reverse osmosis and forward osmosis system

Abstract

Abstract Rapid industrial growth and urbanization will be the major causes of environmental pollution, wastewater, and water quality deterioration. However, the technological advancement in water purification and the water treatment area will be the breakthrough. In recent ten years, membrane-based technology evolved for wastewater treatment, water desalination and power generation. Integration of technology like reverse osmosis(RO) and forward osmosis(FO) provides ambitious benefits like efficient recovery of osmotic energy from brine, improvement in the tendency of fouling and scaling and less quantity of chemical required for pre-treatment. This study reviews various technology that helps towards the wastewater treatment and water desalination with different integration and configuration. Majorly RO and FO integration gives promising outcome in both the situation and it could be price competitive with reverse osmosis systems when its recovery rate of the system is very high, the membrane flux and the membrane cost of the forward osmosis are like those of the reverse osmosis, and the electricity cost is expensive. The most important thing in commercializing the FO process is enhancing performance by improving flux and increasing recovery. An industrial-scale RO-FO hybrid system will be lucrative with membrane that provides greater flux, high selectivity, batter mechanical stability and robustness.