Bader Al-Anzi

Purification of High Salinity Brine by Multi-Stage Ion Concentration Polarization Desalination

There is an increasing need for the desalination of high concentration brine (>TDS 35,000 ppm) efficiently and economically, either for the treatment of produced water from shale gas/oil development, or minimizing the environmental impact of brine from existing desalination plants. Yet, reverse osmosis (RO), which is the most widely used for desalination currently, is not practical for brine desalination. This paper demonstrates technical and economic feasibility of ICP (Ion Concentration Polarization) electrical desalination for the high saline water treatment, by adopting multi-stage operation with better energy efficiency. Optimized multi-staging configurations, dependent on the brine salinity values, can be designed based on experimental and numerical analysis. Such an optimization aims at achieving not just the energy efficiency but also (membrane) area efficiency, lowering the true cost of brine treatment. ICP electrical desalination is shown here to treat brine salinity up to 100,000 ppm of Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) with flexible salt rejection rate up to 70% which is promising in a various application treating brine waste. We also demonstrate that ICP desalination has advantage of removing both salts and diverse suspended solids simultaneously, and less susceptibility to membrane fouling/scaling, which is a significant challenge in the membrane processes.

Recent developments of carbon based nanomaterials and membranes for oily wastewater treatment

Membrane technology has been acknowledged as an advanced separation process of surfactant–stabilized emulsions with allowable discharge quality and a relatively simple process. Despite these unique advantages, the real application of using membranes in industrial fields for treating oily wastewater remains limited. The major problem is severe membrane fouling caused by surfactant adsorption and/or pore plugging by oil droplets as well as degradation over long term application due to its polymeric based structure. In this regard, carbon-based membrane technology has been considered as an attractive technique to fill the gap between membrane technology and existing oily wastewater treatment. This review places a main focus on the recent advances of nanomaterials and carbon-based nanocomposite membrane development for effectively treating emulsified oil/water mixtures. There are four sections in this review. First, a general and brief introduction of the oily wastewater treatment undertaken and the needs of an efficient and broadly applicable approach for the effective separation of various emulsified oily wastewater are given. Secondly, a general overview on research breakthroughs by using various nanomaterials to enhance oily wastewater treatment is provided. This is followed by a review on the current developments of carbon based nanomaterials, nanofibers and membranes based on their fabrication, characterization and separation performance. Some challenges facing the development of carbon based membranes for treating industrial oily wastewater are highlighted at the end of the review.

Anti-Fouling Double-Skinned Forward Osmosis Membrane with Zwitterionic Brush for Oily Wastewater Treatment

Despite its attractive features for energy saving separation, the performance of forward osmosis (FO) has been restricted by internal concentration polarization and fast fouling propensity that occur in the membrane sublayer. These problems have significantly affected the membrane performance when treating highly contaminated oily wastewater. In this study, a novel double-skinned FO membrane with excellent anti-fouling properties has been developed for emulsified oil-water treatment. The double-skinned FO membrane comprises a fully porous sublayer sandwiched between a highly dense polyamide (PA) layer for salt rejection and a fairly loose dense bottom zwitterionic layer for emulsified oil particle removal. The top dense PA layer was synthesized via interfacial polymerization meanwhile the bottom layer was made up of a zwitterionic polyelectrolyte brush - (poly(3-(N-2-methacryloxyethyl-N,N-dimethyl) ammonatopropanesultone), abbreviated as PMAPS layer. The resultant double-skinned membrane exhibited a high water flux of 13.7 ± 0.3 L/m2.h and reverse salt transport of 1.6 ± 0.2 g/m2.h under FO mode using 2 M NaCl as the draw solution and emulsified oily solution as the feed. The double-skinned membrane outperforms the single-skinned membrane with much lower fouling propensity for emulsified oil-water separation.

Recent Developments of Carbon Nanomaterials-Incorporated Membranes, Carbon Nanofibers and Carbon Membranes for Oily Wastewater Treatment

Abstract The major challenges to using membrane technology in oil-related industries are severe membrane fouling caused by the surfactant adsorption and/or pore plugging by oil droplets as well as surface properties degradation due to its polymeric-based structure. In this regard, carbon-based membrane technology has been considered as an attractive technique to fill the gap between membrane technology and existing oily wastewater treatment. This chapter places a main focus on the recent advances of carbon-based nanomaterials and nanocomposite membranes for effective treatment of emulsified oil/water mixtures. A general overview of the research breakthrough using carbon nanomaterial-incorporated membranes and carbon nanofibers to enhance oily wastewater treatment is provided. This is followed by a review of the current development of carbon membranes based on their fabrication, characterization, and separation performance. Some challenges facing the development of carbon-based membranes in oily wastewater treatment are also highlighted at the end of the chapter.

Environmental ranking of desalination plants: the case of the Arabian Gulf

ABSTRACT Performance indicators and ranking methods are effective tools for assessing the environmental impact of emerging technologies and comparing the operational efficiencies of different processes. Desalination of seawater, which is vital for solving the water shortage in the Arabian Gulf region, should be assessed due to its adverse environmental impacts on the shallow and closed Gulf basin. The main objective of the current work is to develop and implement an environmental assessment methodology capable of ranking alternative desalination processes and technologies based on their environmental performance. The proposed methodology starts with identification of relevant indicators and uses the relative ranking of desalination plants together with an aggregated environmental index. The assessment approach was tested on selected desalination plants in the Arabian Gulf region. The results showed that the ranking methods are effective in aggregating the influence of individual indicators to produce a numerical value that indicates the rank of studied desalination plants with respect to their environmental impact.