Experimental and Theoretical Study on Reverse Osmosis Based Water Desalination

Authors

Amr M. Elbrol, Elsayed Elsaid, Yaser elsamadony, Farid A. Hammad, Khaled Khodary Ismaeil

Abstract

Freshwater availability has dropped due to population growth, inefficient use, climate change, and industrial pollution. Although the reverse osmosis, RO, system is one of the most effective desalination technologies worldwide, spiral wound membranes still need deeper theoretical and experimental investigations for removing salts under low energy consumption. In this study, the performance of a commercial pilot RO plant that utilizes a spiral wound seawater membrane module is experimentally investigated under a wide range of operating parameters. In addition, a Mathematical model is developed based on the solution-diffusion model theory and then solved using an in-house MATLAB algorithm to analyze its performance. The theoretical and experimental results were then compared. The present results revealed that the mathematical model’s predictions were highly consistent with the actual experimental results, achieving an average accuracy of about 98%. The average deviation was 4.0578% when predicting water productivity and just 0.2755% when estimating the salt rejection coefficient. The findings of this study could assist designers in predicting the membrane’s performance and selecting the most advantageous operational parameters for supplying water to the RO system.

Recommended Citation

M. Elbrol, Elsayed Elsaid, Yaser elsamadony, Farid A. Hammad, Khaled Khodary Ismaeil, Amr (2023) "Experimental and Theoretical Study on Reverse Osmosis Based Water Desalination," Journal of Engineering Research: Vol. 7: Iss. 3, Article 26.
Available at: https://digitalcommons.aaru.edu.jo/erjeng/vol7/iss3/26