Assessing Advances in Anti-fouling Membranes to Improve Process Economics and Sustainability of Water Treatment

作者：Sabyasachi Das, Margaret G. O’Connell, Xu Hui, Roy Bernstein, Jae‐Hong Kim, Kirti Sankhala, Tamar Segal‐Peretz, Rahul Shevate, Wei Zhang, Xuechen Zhou, Seth B. Darling, Jennifer B. Dunn · 发表于：ACS ES&T Engineering · 年份：2022 · DOI：10.1021/acsestengg.2c00184 · 被引用次数：69 · 研究领域：Membrane Separation Technologies、Membrane-based Ion Separation Techniques、Solar-Powered Water Purification Methods

Membrane fouling in desalination and wastewater treatment increases operating costs and energy consumption. Accordingly, research efforts have focused on developing new membrane materials and surface treatments that can resist fouling. Due to the case-specific nature of fouling, there is limited quantification of the impacts these novel anti-fouling membranes can have on water treatment systems. To address this gap, we report results of high-level analyses that evaluated savings in cost, energy consumption, and life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions when membranes with improved fouling resistance are used in brackish water desalination with reverse osmosis and wastewater treatment with anaerobic membrane bioreactors. To carry out these analyses, we used models Water-TAP3 and GPS-X for desalination and wastewater treatment, respectively. We considered the influence of the membrane replacement rate and clean-in-place frequency in both scenarios. In the case of desalination, we also considered the influence of fouling factor and antiscalant dosage. In both scenarios, we determined that increasing membrane lifetime was the most influential factor in reducing operating expenses. Less influential factors included energy associated with increased pumping pressure to maintain a constant flux in the face of fouling and the frequency of clean-in-place events. Overall, desalination energy consumption was insensitive to the parameters we evaluated. Reducing energy associated with sparging i...