Membrane Desalination

Research work on reverse osmosis focuses on the application of reverse osmosis as well as nanofiltration (NF) membranes to various desalination processes with a  focus on desalination and reclamation of inland water and  agricultural drainage water as well as desalination of seawater. This effort involves fundamental studies on diagnostic approaches to membrane selection and process optimization, fundamentals of membrane fouling and mineral scale formation, scale mitigation by process control and use of antiscalant additives, accelerated precipitation to achieve high product water recovery, neural network analysis of process upsets, field studies of integrated membrane desalination processes, plasma surface modification of RO membrane to reduce surface fouling and finite element modeling of membrane desalination in multi-ion systems.

The objectives of our membrane desalination research are to improve membrane process technology, reduce membrane fouling by surface nano-structuring and process optimization, thereby moving towards the ultimate goal of decreasing the overall cost of membrane desalination.

 

	Diagnostics
	Surface scaling
	Antiscalants
	Accelerated precipitation softening
	Cognitive networks for process analysis
	Field studies
	Numerical modeling
	Modified membranes

Last update:

11/09/2004