Challenges in Forward Osmosis of Seawater Using Ammonium Bicarbonate as Osmotic Agent

Jian-Jun Qin^1, , Gayathri Danasamy², Winson C.L. Lay¹ and Kiran A Kekre¹

¹PUB, Singapore’s National Water Agency, Singapore

²Imperial College London, UK

Cite this paper

Jian-Jun Qin, Gayathri Danasamy, Winson C.L. Lay and Kiran A Kekre. Challenges in Forward Osmosis of Seawater Using Ammonium Bicarbonate as Osmotic Agent. American Journal of Water Resources. 2013; 1(3):51-55. doi: 10.12691/AJWR-1-3-6

Abstract

This study aimed at exploring whether product quality, membrane fouling and salt reverse flow would be challenges in forward osmosis (FO) of seawater using NH₄₃ as an osmotic agent. Experiments were conducted with a lab scale FO system containing effective membrane area of 95 cm². Synthetic seawater (SSW) with 3.5-7.0 mg/L boron and a real seawater (RSW) were used as feeds and 1.5-2.5 M NH₄₃ as draw solutions. The experimental operation could be stablized within 0.5 h. For the SSW, boron rejection ranged of 47-85% and increased with increasing water flux while boron in the permeate was greater than 0.8mg/L. Water flux with RSW was 3 times lower than that with SSW, indicating that there might be serious membrane fouling with RSW. It was surprisingly observed that non volatile organic in the FO permeate was 8-10 mg/L, which was from the draw solution although NH₄₃ used was analytical grade. Additional water cost would be $0.4/m³ because of NH₄₃ loss. It was concluded that product quality in terms of high TOC contaminant in NH₄₃ and low boron removal, serious fouling with RSW and salt reverse flow could be challenges for the FO process using NH₄₃ as osmotic agent for seawater desalination.

Keywords

seawater desalination, forward osmosis, ammonium bicarbonate, boron removal, membrane fouling, salt loss

Copyright

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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