Question of the Day: Forward Osmosis

Media

Taxonomy

• Industrial Wastewater Treatment
• Industrial Water Treatment
• Industrial Water Treatment
• Forward Osmosis

7 Answers

1. I've had some very limited exposure to FO.

   The successful applications I have seen are related to dewatering of various products. I would see potential application of FO in the areas of food and beverage and mineral processing, but not in production of clean water (at least based on what I've seen).

2. in industries million gallons of the wastewater is produced daily in order to treat this large volume hydraulic retention time is higher and it requires large volume as forward osmosis produces pressure due to concentration difference it takes much time and it is slow process than applying external pressure. I think it is not very successful.

    

3. like business for manufactures and distributors, yes; for environment and customers health, not

4. Interesting idea but is energy intensive. More research needed.

    

   1 Comment

   1. I would not consider this energy intensive at all, when ample waste heat is present in power generation facilities that have exhaust, just heat up the produced water, small circulating pump energy is the other energy input.

      The only desalination process with possibly lower specific energy input will be membrane capacitive deionization.

5. The choice of method will always depend on the concentration of the raw water inputs. for salty water, this option is economically viable  even today

6. Forward Osmosis is a very useful technique in water recovery from mine tailings, and can be used in other applications to concentration a solution to some desirable value.  FO membranes are more robust (thicker) than RO membranes, and can generally take considerably more "abuse".

   The FO has been utilized for field water purification for troops where the draw solution is concentrated sugar, and so the soldier gets a hydration aliquot with also some instant energy from the sugar.

   FO could be applied with low grade waste heat on the spent draw solution where thermolytic salt such a ammonium bicarbonate is used.  Heat at 45-60 degree C is sufficient to break the salt down to ammonia and carbon dioxide in the head space above the recovered water, thus producing relatively pure water from swamp water, sewage, bilge water, river water, etc.

7. Limited in applications, Front Osmosis was not found commercially successful.

   1 Comment

   1. I don't think you know what you are talking about.

      1 Comment reply

      1. James, Front Osmosis commercial development has not been seen at the level of the expectations and hopes. Very few and limited Industrial-scale installations seen so far.