Water desalination studies using forward osmosis technology : a review

Abstract EN

Fresh water and energy shortage represent a great challenge facing the whole world now.

To cover the global water demand, an energy-efficient approach is required to be applied in the suitable technology to achieve the shortage in the fresh water demand.

Different techniques are used to solve this problem.

Among the different methods applied to desalinate seawater is the osmosis technologies.

Although reversible osmosis (RO) is the most familiar method used for this purpose, forward osmosis (FO) represents a more suitable technique due to several arguments including low energy cost.

The present study represents the use of FO technique for water desalination with adsorption regeneration.

In this respect, a self-prepared granular active carbon produced from dates is to be used as an adsorbent agent.

The physical characteristics of the active carbon are studied such as BET specific surface area, pore size, particle size and the structure using scanning electron microscope (SEM).

Different advanced apparatus are used for such measurements.

In addition, the adsorption isotherms (Langmuier and Freundlich) are established to explain the adsorption mechanism of the process.

Accordingly, the review includes essential information and sufficient backgrounds in the field of desalination using FO or simply direct osmosis, which overcome the different difficulties present in reversible RO.