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Forward osmosis (FO) technology has gained tremendous attention in recent years in desalination and wastewater treatment. Developing a new state of the art forward osmosis membranes is vital for advancing the FO technology to achieve commercialization status in the near future. Polymeric membranes such as cellulose triacetate and thin-film composite (TFC) membranes are the only available commercial membranes. Besides being expensive compared to the reverse osmosis membranes, these membranes exhibit lower water flux, high reverse salt flux, prone to irreversible fouling and have a limited lifetime. The emergence of nanotechnology has enabled researchers to design new membranes with superior performance compared to the commercially available membranes. One promising field is the incorporation of nanomaterials into polymeric membranes to enhance their performance. Researching in this space has resulted in the emergence of a new class of membranes discussed in this chapter. The study covered the synthesis process of flat sheet and hollow fibre membranes modified by incorporation of nanoparticles and discussed stimuli-responsive membranes such as pH-responsive, electric field responsive and salt responsive membranes for water purification. The main challenges associated with the commercialization and future research perspectives are also discussed to identify future research aspects.

© 2020 Elsevier B.V. Contamination and industrial development are among the reasons for water quality deterioration beyond treatability by conventional processes. Unfortunately, conventional water and wastewater treatment technologies are not always capable of handling industrial wastewaters, and hence more advanced treatment technologies are required. The new trend of osmotically driven membrane technologies has demonstrated an exceptional efficiency for water purification and treatment including seawater desalination. Compared to pressure-driven membrane processes, forward osmosis (FO) technology, as a standalone process, is more energy-efficient, and less prone to membrane fouling than its predecessor reverse osmosis (RO) technology. However, forward osmosis suffers a severe concentration polarization that is acting on both sides of the membrane and results in a sharp decline in water flux. A thinner support layer has been recommended to lessen the concentration polarization impact in the FO process but a very thin support layer compromises the membrane mechanical strength. Recently, researchers have applied different carbon-based nanomaterials to enhance water flux, fouling propensity, and mechanical strength of the FO membrane. This work reviews advancement in the FO membrane fabrication using carbon nanomaterials to improve the membrane characteristics. Despite a large number of laboratory experiments, carbon-based nanomaterials in the FO membrane are still at the early-stage of laboratory investigation and no commercial products are available yet. The study also reviews the main challenges that limit the application of carbon-based nanomaterials for FO membranes.

The research reported in this paper was supported by University of Southern Queensland, and Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research (Iraq). We would also like to thank our industry partners for their help and assistance. In particular, we would like to acknowledge the technical support of the Scarab Co. staff and provision of membranes from Donaldson filtration.

Publisher Copyright: © 2021 Elsevier Ltd Membrane separation is widely used in wastewater treatment and desalination due to its high performance and ability to handle feed solutions of different qualities. Despite vast history of success, membrane fouling remains a major system deficiency that imposes substantial process limitations by reducing permeate production and increasing energy demand. Besides, chemical cleaning-in-place (CIP) adversely affects membrane integrity and generates an extra waste stream. Ultrasound (US) is a relatively new cleaning technique that improves process performance by mitigating fouling accumulation at a membrane surface and improving permeate flux by promoting mass and heat transfer. US-assisted membrane processes is an efficient method for fouling reduction and significant flux improvement. This study comprehensively reviews US applications in pressure-, thermally- and osmotic-driven membrane technologies and their impact on process performance. It also explores the impact of US operating conditions on membrane separation properties and how these parameters can be tuned to achieve the desirable outcome. To date, the application of US in membrane technologies is limited to laboratory tests. In the authors' opinion, there is a niche market for US-assisted membrane technology in heavily contaminated water such as wastewater and brine. After critical analysis of the literature, we found that there are still several aspects of the process need to be scrutinized carefully to make an adequate evaluation of its feasibility on an industrial scale. The most urgent one is the techno-economic evaluation of the technology based on large-scale and long-term tests. The study proposed a set of recommendations for future research directions of US applications in membrane technologies.

This study investigates the efficiency of low-power ultrasound in the range of 3.5–30.0 W to improve permeate flux and alleviate membrane fouling in an air–gap membrane distillation (AGMD) system. Natural groundwater and reverse osmosis (RO) reject water were fed into the AGMD system on which fouling experiments were conducted with hydrophobic polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) membrane. After 35 h of AGMD system operation with groundwater and RO reject water, fouling caused the permeate flux to decrease by 30% and 40% respectively. Concentration polarization, intermediate pore blocking, and cake filtration appear to be the main reasons for flux decline with both feedwater types. Ultrasound application for a short period of 15 min resulted in flux improvement by as high as 400% and 250% for RO reject and groundwater, respectively. Modelling of the heat and mass transfers showed that the flux increase was mainly due to membrane permeability improvements under ultrasonic vibration. Fouling visualisation using Scanning Electron Microscopy revealed that ultrasound effectively removed membrane fouling without compromising the membrane's structure. Importantly, permeate flux improvements with targeted low-power ultrasound appears to be proportionally higher than those of high-power ultrasound applied to the whole system, on a flux improvement per ultrasound W/m2 basis.

© 2019, © 2019 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC. An emerging osmotically driven membrane process, forward osmosis has attracted growing attention in the field of desalination and wastewater treatment. The present study provides a critical review of the forward osmosis process for wastewater treatment focusing on most recent studies. Forward osmosis is one of the technologies that has been widely studied for the treatment of a wide range of wastewater because of its low fouling and energy consumption compared to conventional techniques for wastewater treatment. To date, forward osmosis has limited applications in the field of wastewater treatment due to several technical and economic concerns. Although membrane cost is one of the critical issues that limit the commercial application of forward osmosis, there are other obstacles such as membrane fouling, finding an ideal draw solution that can easily be recycled, concentration polarization and reverse salt diffusion. Innovative technologies for in-situ real-time fouling monitoring can give us new insights into fouling mechanisms and fouling control strategies in forward osmosis. This study evaluated recent advancements in forward osmosis technology for wastewater treatment and the main challenges that need to be addressed in future research work.

Air Gap Membrane distillation (AGMD) is a thermally driven separation process capable of treating challenging water types, but its low productivity is a major drawback. Membrane fouling is a common problem in many membrane treatment systems, which exacerbates AGMD’s low overall productivity. In this study, we investigated the direct application of low-power ultrasound (8–23 W), as an in-line cleaning and performance boosting technique for AGMD. Two different highly saline feedwaters, namely natural groundwater (3970 μS/cm) and RO reject stream water (12760 μS/cm) were treated using Polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) and polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) membranes. Theoretical calculations and experimental investigations are presented, showing that the applied ultrasonic power range only produced acoustic streaming effects that enhanced cleaning and mass transfer. Attenuated Total Reflection Fourier-Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (ATR FT-IR) analysis showed that ultrasound was capable of effectively removing silica and calcium scaling. Ultrasound application on a fouled membrane resulted in a 100% increase in the permeate flux. Cleaning effects accounted for around 30–50% of this increase and the remainder was attributed to mass transfer improvements. Contaminant rejection percentages were consistently high for all treatments (>99%), indicating that ultrasound did not deteriorate the membrane structure. Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) analysis of the membrane surface was used to confirm this observation. The images of the membrane surface demonstrated that ultrasound successfully cleaned the previously fouled membrane, with no signs of structural damage. The results of this study highlight the efficient and effective application of direct low power ultrasound for improving AGMD performance.

© 2019 This study provided new insights regarding the energy efficiency of hollow fibre forward osmosis modules for seawater desalination; and as a consequence an approach was developed to improve the process performance. Previous analysis overlooked the relationship between the energy efficiency and operating modes of the hollow fibre forward osmosis membrane when the process was scaled-up. In this study, the module length and operating parameters were incorporated in the design of an energy-efficient forward osmosis system. The minimum specific power consumption for seawater desalination was calculated at the thermodynamic limits. Two FO operating modes: (1) draw solution in the lumen and (2) feed solution in the lumen, were evaluated in terms of the desalination energy requirements at a minimum draw solution flow rate. The results revealed that the operating mode of the forward osmosis membrane was important in terms of reducing the desalination energy. In addition, the length of the forward osmosis module was also a significant factor and surprisingly increasing the length of the forward osmosis module was not always advantageous in improving the performance. The study outcomes also showed that seawater desalination by the forward osmosis process was less energy efficient at low and high osmotic draw solution concentration and performed better at 1.2–1.4 M sodium chloride draw solution concentrations. The findings of this study provided a platform to the manufacturers and operators of hollow fibre forward osmosis membrane to improve the energy efficiency of the desalination process.