Theoretical and Experimental investigations of doubleskinned membrane in Forward Osmosis Desalination System

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is a world leader in producing desalinated water with a share of about 20% of the world production. Water desalination is one of the crucial fields that receive great attention and is already a part of the Kingdoms 2030 vision. Forward Osmosis is one of the promising technologies due to its substantially lower energy consumption and flexibility to be used both as a stand-alone system or integrating to another desalination system. Accordingly, Forward Osmosis (FO) desalination is the subject of this proposal. Efficient membrane is a crucial element in improving FO systems performance. The proposal matches the latest trend of synthesizing double-skinned membranes that lately showed excellent properties including the reverse salt flux and fouling propensity. The investigators are considering the synthesis of double-skin membrane where each skin will be synthesized from different material and optimized for the corresponding side. Synthesized membrane will be characterized and then tested using different draw solutions in an experimental cross-flow setup that will be designed and built at home. In addition, the performance of FO system will be estimated theoretically through the development of a mathematical model to predict key performance parameters such as permeate flux, reverse solute flux, and salt rejection. The system will be run under various operating conditions such as temperature, draw solution concentration, and cross-flow velocity. Collected data will be fed to the simulation model to investigate a couple of options for the water recovery unit and then optimize its operating conditions for the maximum permeate flux and salt rejection. Based on the result, those parameters will be tested experimentally using the crossflow setup