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Membranes
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Modeling, Simulation and Application of Membrane Processes for Water Treatment
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Modeling, Simulation and Application of Membrane Processes for Water Treatment

A special issue of Membranes (ISSN 2077-0375). This special issue belongs to the section "Membrane Physics and Theory".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (20 August 2022) | Viewed by 11467

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Alejandro Ruiz García

E-Mail Website1 Website2
Guest Editor
Department of Electronic Engineering and Automation, University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, 35017 Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Canary Islands, Spain
Interests: desalination; reverse osmosis; fouling; wastewater; modelling; process control
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Mudhar Al-Obaidi

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Technical Institute of Baquba, Middle Technical University, Baquba 32001, Iraq
Interests: modelling, simulation and optimization of membrane and thermal water desalination and wastewater treatment; hybrid systems based renewable energy
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Water treatment is essential since it covers fundamental aspects such as the supply of drinking water, water for irrigation and industries, as well as the treatment of wastewater for its subsequent discharge. Membrane-based processes such as reverse osmosis, forward osmosis, pressure retarded osmosis, membrane distillation, nanofiltration, ultrafiltration, microfiltration, electrodialysis, membrane capacitive deionization, etc. are key in water treatment. Despite the efforts made, there is still room for improvement in aspects such as energy consumption, water flux recovery, environmental concerns and the impact of membrane fouling on the performance of the processes, these issues constitute some of the main obstacles for the implementation of membrane-based processes. The application of modelling and simulation techniques are key to overcome the previous barriers as they can provide optimal design and operation solutions as well as assist in the design of control systems that allow improving the performance of membrane processes for water treatment in terms of energy, economy and environment.

This Special Issue on "Modeling and Simulations of Membrane Processes for Water Treatment" aims to gather the foremost developments in methodologies, algorithms and advanced computer-aided tools to enhance water treatment systems. Modeling and simulation approaches embracing modelling of phenomena and simulation algorithm and methods that allow analyzing the response of systems, optimal system designs and operation. Manuscripts related to the above are welcomed to address the most challenging problems faced by the water industry today. Topics include, but are not limited to:

  • Water treatment powered by renewable energy
  • Water–energy nexus
  • Desalination systems
  • Urban and industrial wastewater treatment
  • Hybrid membrane processes for water treatment
  • Transport and process modelling in water treatment
  • Optimal operation of membrane processes for water treatment
  • Fouling and scaling in membrane processes for water treatment
  • Control of membrane processes in water treatment

Dr. Alejandro Ruiz García
Dr. Mudhar Al-Obaidi
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Membranes is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2200 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • Desalination
  • Wastewater treatment
  • Modelling and simulation
  • Renewable energy sources
  • Water–energy nexus
  • Membranes
  • Process control
  • Optimization

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Published Papers (4 papers)

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Research

20 pages, 3927 KiB  
Article
A Novel Ocean Thermal Energy Driven System for Sustainable Power and Fresh Water Supply
by Qingfen Ma, Yun Zheng, Hui Lu, Jingru Li, Shenghui Wang, Chengpeng Wang, Zhongye Wu, Yijun Shen and Xuejin Liu
Membranes 2022, 12(2), 160; https://doi.org/10.3390/membranes12020160 - 28 Jan 2022
Cited by 9 | Viewed by 2465
Abstract
The ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) is a potential substitute for traditional power plants in tropical islands and coastal regions. However, the OTEC power generation cycle has low thermal efficiency and the integrated utilization is imperative, in which an OTEC coupled with seawater [...] Read more.
The ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) is a potential substitute for traditional power plants in tropical islands and coastal regions. However, the OTEC power generation cycle has low thermal efficiency and the integrated utilization is imperative, in which an OTEC coupled with seawater desalination is the most attractive option. Membrane distillation (MD) has distinct advantages making itself a competitive process for seawater desalination, especially the feature that the drained warm seawater from the OTEC power plant can be recycled, improving the integrated output of the OTEC system. In this study, an innovative OTEC system coupling a power generation sub-cycle (PGC) and a water production sub-cycle (WPC) was proposed, composed of the upstream organic Rankine cycle and the downstream membrane distillation modules. The mass, energy and exergy balance of the individual equipment, the sub-cycles and the whole system were performed by constructing the corresponding balance models. The thermal dynamic parameters were calculated, and the performance of power generation and water production was predicted. The results showed that by coupling with the MD desalination, the thermal efficiency of the OTEC system can be greatly improved from 2.19% to 25.38% while the exergy efficiency changed little. For a 100 kW OTEC power generation cycle, the water production rate approached 58.874 t/d. In addition, the economic analysis based on the electricity and water sale was carried out, and the profit can be improved by extra water production, especially in the Hawaii and Rainbow Beach by nearly 20%. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Modeling, Simulation and Application of Membrane Processes for Water Treatment)
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13 pages, 1518 KiB  
Article
Flux Increase Occurring When an Ultrafiltration Membrane Is Flipped from a Normal to an Inverted Position—Experiments and Theory
by Ladan Zoka, Ying Siew Khoo, Woei Jye Lau, Takeshi Matsuura, Roberto Narbaitz and Ahmad Fauzi Ismail
Membranes 2022, 12(2), 129; https://doi.org/10.3390/membranes12020129 - 21 Jan 2022
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 2870
Abstract
The effects of flipping membranes with hydrophilic/hydrophobic asymmetry are well documented in the literature, but not much is known on the impact of flipping a membrane with dense/porous layer asymmetry. In this work, the pure water flux (PWF) of a commercial polyethersulfone (PES) [...] Read more.
The effects of flipping membranes with hydrophilic/hydrophobic asymmetry are well documented in the literature, but not much is known on the impact of flipping a membrane with dense/porous layer asymmetry. In this work, the pure water flux (PWF) of a commercial polyethersulfone (PES) membrane and a ceramic ultrafiltration (UF) membrane was measured in the normal and inverted positions. Our experimental results showed that the PWF was two orders of magnitude higher when the PES membrane was flipped to the inverted position, while the increase was only two times for the ceramic membrane. The filtration experiments were also carried out using solutions of bovine serum albumin and poly(vinylpyrrolidone). A mathematical model was further developed to explain the PWF increase in the inverted position based on the Bernoulli’s rule, considering a straight cylindrical pore of small radius connected to a pore of larger radius in series. It was found by simulation that a PWF increase was indeed possible when the solid ceramic membrane was flipped, maintaining its pore geometry. The flow from a layer with larger pore size to a layer with smaller pore size occurred in the backwashing of the fouled membrane and in forward and pressure-retarded osmosis when the membrane was used with its active layer facing the draw solution (AL-DS). Therefore, this work is of practical significance for the cases where the direction of the water flow is in the inverted position of the membrane. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Modeling, Simulation and Application of Membrane Processes for Water Treatment)
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17 pages, 3958 KiB  
Article
Alleviation of Ultrafiltration Membrane Fouling by ClO2 Pre-Oxidation: Fouling Mechanism and Interface Characteristics
by Bin Liu, Meng Wang, Kaihan Yang, Guangchao Li and Zhou Shi
Membranes 2022, 12(1), 78; https://doi.org/10.3390/membranes12010078 - 10 Jan 2022
Cited by 7 | Viewed by 2214
Abstract
In order to alleviate membrane fouling and improve removal efficiency, a series of pretreatment technologies were applied to the ultrafiltration process. In this study, ClO2 was used as a pre-oxidation strategy for the ultrafiltration (UF) process. Humic acid (HA), sodium alginate (SA), [...] Read more.
In order to alleviate membrane fouling and improve removal efficiency, a series of pretreatment technologies were applied to the ultrafiltration process. In this study, ClO2 was used as a pre-oxidation strategy for the ultrafiltration (UF) process. Humic acid (HA), sodium alginate (SA), and bovine serum albumin (BSA) were used as three typical organic model foulants, and the mixture of the three substances was used as a representation of simulated natural water. The dosages of ClO2 were 0.5, 1, 2, 4, and 8 mg/L, with 90 min pre-oxidation. The results showed that ClO2 pre-oxidation at low doses (1–2 mg/L) could alleviate the membrane flux decline caused by humus, polysaccharides, and simulated natural water, but had a limited alleviating effect on the irreversible resistance of the membrane. The interfacial free energy analysis showed that the interaction force between the membrane and the simulated natural water was also repulsive after the pre-oxidation, indicating that ClO2 pre-oxidation was an effective way to alleviate cake layer fouling by reducing the interaction between the foulant and the membrane. In addition, ClO2 oxidation activated the hidden functional groups in the raw water, resulting in an increase in the fluorescence value of humic analogs, but had a good removal effect on the fluorescence intensity of BSA. Furthermore, the membrane fouling fitting model showed that ClO2, at a low dose (1 mg/L), could change the mechanism of membrane fouling induced by simulated natural water from standard blocking and cake layer blocking to critical blocking. Overall, ClO2 pre-oxidation was an efficient pretreatment strategy for UF membrane fouling alleviation, especially for the fouling control of HA and SA at low dosages. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Modeling, Simulation and Application of Membrane Processes for Water Treatment)
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19 pages, 18476 KiB  
Article
Model Based Simulation and Genetic Algorithm Based Optimisation of Spiral Wound Membrane RO Process for Improved Dimethylphenol Rejection from Wastewater
by Mudhar A. Al-Obaidi, Alejandro Ruiz-García, Ghanim Hassan, Jian-Ping Li, Chakib Kara-Zaïtri, Ignacio Nuez and Iqbal M. Mujtaba
Membranes 2021, 11(8), 595; https://doi.org/10.3390/membranes11080595 - 4 Aug 2021
Cited by 11 | Viewed by 2380
Abstract
Reverse Osmosis (RO) has already proved its worth as an efficient treatment method in chemical and environmental engineering applications. Various successful RO attempts for the rejection of organic and highly toxic pollutants from wastewater can be found in the literature over the last [...] Read more.
Reverse Osmosis (RO) has already proved its worth as an efficient treatment method in chemical and environmental engineering applications. Various successful RO attempts for the rejection of organic and highly toxic pollutants from wastewater can be found in the literature over the last decade. Dimethylphenol is classified as a high-toxic organic compound found ubiquitously in wastewater. It poses a real threat to humans and the environment even at low concentration. In this paper, a model based framework was developed for the simulation and optimisation of RO process for the removal of dimethylphenol from wastewater. We incorporated our earlier developed and validated process model into the Species Conserving Genetic Algorithm (SCGA) based optimisation framework to optimise the design and operational parameters of the process. To provide a deeper insight of the process to the readers, the influences of membrane design parameters on dimethylphenol rejection, water recovery rate and the level of specific energy consumption of the process for two different sets of operating conditions are presented first which were achieved via simulation. The membrane parameters taken into consideration include membrane length, width and feed channel height. Finally, a multi-objective function is presented to optimise the membrane design parameters, dimethylphenol rejection and required energy consumption. Simulation results affirmed insignificant and significant impacts of membrane length and width on dimethylphenol rejection and specific energy consumption, respectively. However, these performance indicators are negatively influenced due to increasing the feed channel height. On the other hand, optimisation results generated an optimum removal of dimethylphenol at reduced specific energy consumption for a wide sets of inlet conditions. More importantly, the dimethylphenol rejection increased by around 2.51% to 98.72% compared to ordinary RO module measurements with a saving of around 20.6% of specific energy consumption. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Modeling, Simulation and Application of Membrane Processes for Water Treatment)
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