- Online lecture B8: Online lecture B8: Making use of osmotic energy: Forward osmosis as emerging process for desalination and water reuse
- Date: June 26, 2024
- Time: 10:00 CEST
Abstract
Forward osmosis (FO) and its unique feature (high rejection, no hydraulic pressure, relying on osmotic pressure) opens the door for the treatment of complex streams with the double interests of concentrating feed water components while allowing permeation of high purity water. Such functionalities are of high interest for wastewater (WW) treatment in the context of circular economy, pushing towards concentration of nutrients and water recycling. Forward osmosis requires a high salinity stream (draw solution) for water permeation through osmotic pressure and regeneration of the draw solution is sometimes a limitation in term of energy. For seawater desalination, reverse osmosis (RO) is the most efficient and widespread membrane technology, but its broader development remains limited by its energy consumption. By combining water reuse and desalination, FO will take advantage of free osmotic energy of seawater to concentrate nutrients from wastewater, produce high quality water in a FO-RO hybrid and reduce energy demands for RO desalination thanks to osmotic dilution of seawater.
Presenter
Gaetan Blandin is senior researcher, post-doctoral La Caixa Junior Leader Fellow and Ramon y Cajal fellow at Lequia (University of Girona, Spain) since October 2021. He graduated in 1999 in chemical engineering from University of Nantes (France) and later completed his Joint PhD in chemical engineering at the University of New South Wales (Australia) and Ghent University (Belgium) in 2015. He has been working as researcher in private and public sector for more than 20 years. His research is dedicated to water processes associated with membrane technologies within the context of circular economy dealing for several applications (desalination, water reuse, nutrients recovery) and topics (process validation and control, fouling and cleaning, module design /process modelling and optimisation, fundamentals of mass transfer).