Fouling limitations of osmotic pressure-driven processes and its remedial strategies: A review

Abstract

The scarcity of freshwater is one of the major challenges to the civilized community around the World. So, the various engineered processes have been developed for the remediation of this problem such as osmotic pressure-driven processes (OPDPs). OPDPs includes forward osmosis and pressure retarded osmosis, which have gained enormous attention and becoming a flexible membrane-based technology for desalination and wastewater treatment. The most significant components of the OPDPs to be efficient are the membranes and the draw solution. Although numerous studies highlighted the membrane fouling and concentration polarization are one of the critical parameters to assess the system efficiency in the OPDPs and other pressure driven membrane processes. This study delivers an up-to-date review of the OPDPs in terms of concentration polarization, membrane fouling (organic, inorganic, and biofouling), foulant interactions, remedial strategies, monitoring and characterization techniques, and future directions of research. Numerous foulant interactions are also elaborated for the OPDPs in the field of the membrane separation technique. State of the art in antifouling membrane fabrication methods are critically reviewed along with different remedial strategies for fouled membranes in OPDPs.