(412d) The Tailor-Design of Novel Draw Solutions in Forward Osmosis

Water scarcity and energy resources will continually be a challenge and increasing important to the future of human civilization which an expanding global population. For future technology, we would like to get or increase the water supply from reusing the water sources or through desalination, and at the same time, little or no external energy is needed for such process of conversion. In achieving this, Forward Osmosis (FO) is a good candidate. FO is a natural process. It utilizes the highly osmotic pressure gradient to draw the water from the dissolved solutes in feed solution through a semi-permeable membrane. FO has been used to treat industrial wastewaters (at bench-scale), to concentrate landfill leachate (at pilot- and full-scale), and to treat liquid foods in the food industry (at bench-scale). However, in making it a further affordable technology, the FO membrane and its highly-osmotic-pressure draw solute are always in research concerned. One of the main challenges for the draw solution is on its recovery process in the FO system. In this presentation, we will present our tailor-design draw solution as well as the concept of this entire new recovering process. This draw solution has been studied in the FO system and its performance will be presented.