Fertilizer drawn forward osmosis as an alternative to 2nd pass seawater reverse osmosis: Estimation of boron removal and energy consumption

Highlights

• The boron concentration in diluted DS can satisfy the irrigation water standard.

• The boron concentration in diluted DS equaled that in two-pass RO permeate.

• FDFO process SEC was slightly lower than the 2nd pass RO SEC.

• FDFO has potential as an alternative to 2nd pass RO for irrigation water production.

Abstract

Agriculture is the largest consumer of freshwater. Desalinated seawater is an important alternative water source for sustainable irrigation. However, some issues of the current desalination technology hinder its use for agriculture irrigation, including low boron removal and high energy consumption. This study systematically explored the feasibility of employing fertilizer drawn forward osmosis (FDFO) as an alternative to 2nd pass reverse osmosis (RO) by considering the boron removal performance and specific energy consumption (SEC). Different operating conditions were investigated, such as the boron and NaCl concentrations in feed solution (FS), draw solution (DS) concentration, pH, the volume ratio of FS to DS, membrane orientation, flow rate, and operating temperature. The results indicated that a low boron concentration in FS and high pH DS (pH= 11.0) decreased the boron solute flux, and led to low final boron concentration in the DS. The other operating conditions had negligible influence on the final DS boron concentration. Also, a lower flow rate and higher specific water flux with certain permeate water volumes were conducive to reducing the SEC of the FDFO process. Overall, our study paves a new way of using FDFO in irrigation, which avoids the phytotoxicity and human health risk of boron. The results show the potential of FDFO as an alternative to 2nd pass RO for irrigation water production.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

Fertilizer drawn forward osmosis (FDFO) / Boron removal / Specific energy consumption (SEC) / Seawater reverse osmosis (SWRO) / Irrigation water production

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (No. 2018YFC040800202), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 21878177), the Natural Science Foundation of Shandong Province (No. ZR2019LFG003), and the grants from the Tai Shan Scholar Foundation (No. ts201511003). The authors thank Dr. Pamela Holt for editing the manuscript.

Electronic Supplementary Material

Supplementary material is available in the online version of this article at https://doi.org/10.1007/s11783-021-1428-0 and is accessible for authorized users.

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