Characterization of US Seawaters & Development of Standardized Protocols for Evaluation of Foulants in Seawater RO Desalination

Desalination technologies using reverse osmosis (RO) membranes have been in development for more than four decades. Although significant advances in membrane technology have been developed to efficiently operate seawater RO (SWRO) systems, control of membrane fouling still seems elusive. Because of seawater’s complex matrix, characterization and identification of the nature of foulants responsible for decreased SWRO performance are incomplete. The project characterizes seawater from various locations in the United States, evaluates methods for characterizing clean and fouled membranes, identifies organic foulants using bench-scale RO experiments, studies the influence of membrane properties and algal bloom (red-tide events) on organic fouling, and compares fouling between bench-scale SWRO operation and pilot-scale SWRO operation.

Originally funded as WERF project Desal-06-14.