Water Desalination with Reverse Osmosis

Dear Colleagues,

Recent population trends have included increased urbanization, migration to arid regions like the desert southwest of the United States, and migration to coastal areas.  An outcome of these population trends is that more people now live in areas where high-quality fresh water is in short supply.  As a result, these communities are having to turn to poorer-quality water sources such as ocean water, brackish groundwater, and water impaired by discharges of industrial or municipal wastewater.  Desalination treatment can make these waters suitable for human consumption, and one of the most common treatment technologies for desalination is reverse osmosis (RO).  Although RO has been commercially viable for more than 40 years, it has not been easy to implement on a large scale.  Obstacles to widespread use of RO include high cost, low water recovery, high energy consumption, high waste (concentrate) production, and membrane fouling.  Water treatment engineers have continued to tackle these issues, with the result that RO is more efficient and practical than ever before.  This special issue focuses on improvements in RO treatment in recent years, as well as additional challenges that need to be overcome to increase the use of RO in the future.  The main themes include, but are not limited to:

• Feed water quality
• Pretreatment
• Membrane fouling
• Membrane scaling
• Permeate water quality
• Post treatment
• Concentrate management
• Energy recovery
• Energy efficiency
• Membrane material improvements
• Innovative system design
• Performance modeling
• Treatment applications and case studies
• Removal of specific compounds
• Trace contaminant removal for wastewater reuse
• Other topics related to RO performance

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