Development of chemical-free methods of fouling mitigation for membrane processes in desalination

As water scarcity continues to intensify around the globe, the need for more efficient and sustainable desalination technologies has never been more pressing. While membrane technology, namely reverse osmosis (RO), currently stands as the most energy efficient desalination technology, it is plagued by fouling undercutting both productivity and permeate quality. To restore performance, desalination plants resort to chemical cleaning, incurring losses in productivity, chemical cost, and membrane replacement all while raising environmental concerns associated with chemical waste. In this work, we explore alternative chemical-free methods of membrane fouling mitigation. First, membrane pretreatment using nanofiltration is investigated as a means of mitigating inorganic fouling in downstream desalination systems. Transport modeling is employed in fabricating specialized nanofiltration membranes for desalination pretreatment.

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctoral

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2020

Author dc:creator

• Labban, Omar.

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• .John H. Lienhard V

• Mechanical Engineering.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses may be protected by copyright. Please reuse MIT thesis content according to the MIT Libraries Permissions Policy, which is available through the URL provided.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/127055

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/127055