Simulation of forward osmosis and pressure retarded osmosis membrane performance: Effect of TiO2 nanoparticles loading on the semi-permeable membrane

Abstract

Forward osmosis (FO) has made significant progress in recent years as an emerging membrane technology for the treatment of water and wastewater. Differential osmotic pressure is used to extract pure water across a semi-permeable membrane in this process. CFD simulations were used to investigate the performance of flux changes in membrane systems in this study. This paper simulates the performance of a thin film composite (TFC) membrane with a titanium dioxide (TiO2) modified substrate in terms of FO and pressure retarded osmosis (PRO). The results showed how the simulation results (CFD) can be used to detect flux changes with additive particles. It was discovered that even a small amount of TiO2 nanoparticles can alter water flux. In the FO and PRO systems, adding 1 wt% TiO2 to the membrane matrix increased water flux by about 15% and 14%, respectively. Nevertheless, the increased solute flux was insignificant in simulation, which indicates the positive effect of adding TiO2 nanoparticles. Finally, a comparison of the results for different membranes indicated the best correlation between the simulation and experimental results, when 0.75 wt% TiO2 was used, and a relative error of 0.3% has been recorded in PRO process. Also, the maximum pure water flux rate (8·974×10-4[Formula presented]·s)obtained in the simulation of thin film nanocomposite (TFN) 1 and PRO process.