SBIR-STTR Award

Reverse Osmosis, as an effective method for recovery of fresh water from seawater by desalination, is gaining considerable attention. The problems associated with reverse osmosis process are the concentration polarization and membrane fouling, which cause the decline of membrane flux and require the use of higher system pressure and regularly cleaning. Frequent cleaning not only is a cost operation, but also leads to significant logistics and safety problem. Tangential-flow filtration technique reduces the concentration polarization and fouling by controlling the feed flow pattern so as to enhance the transport of the retained solute particles away from the membrane surface and back to the bulk of the feed. Because of the intrinsic steady uniform attributes, it can not completely eliminate the concentration polarization and fouling. AETRI proposes a high rate, cleaning free, low energy costs, Pulsating-flow Reverse Osmosis (PRO) technology which suggests a complete new approach to the reverse osmosis process and is capable of effectively eliminating concentration polarization and membrane fouling. PRO preserves the membrane flux at a desired original level with no need of increasing the system pressure, hence, it provides a potential of overall system size and weight reduction.