Development and implementations of integrated osmosis system

The development and implementations of an integrated osmosis system (IOS) was discussed in this chapter. An IOS is comprised of the sequential stages of forward osmosis (FO), reverse osmosis (RO), and the related membranes. Performance and cost-effectiveness that cannot be easily achieved individually with the component systems can be achieved with IOS by optimally placing and using the desired properties of each membrane. IOS provides high diffusive and osmotic permeability, high rejection, low power consumption, and high mass transfer via the manipulation of convection, advection and diffusion, low concentration polarization gradients, low reverse salt flux, and effective restoration of performance after cleaning fouled membranes. The benefits of IOS include better permeate recovery and decreased volume of waste concentrate from RO processes or other elevated osmotic pressure solutions. The process of integrated osmosis first involves the use of a nanofiltration process to selectively harvest the solutes to achieve permeates with a reduced osmotic pressure. Then, the FO process is initialized to dewater the lowered osmotic pressure permeate in order to generate a dilute draw solution that serves as feed to the RO process. For the FO proses, RO permeate provides freshwater while the concentrate provides the draw solution. At the end of this chapter, an attempt is also made to show the research development and future direction of IOS, through hybrid membrane technology. The potential of the integrated systems to solve the world’s water crisis is more advantageous and economical compared to the individual systems.