Performance evaluation of aquaporin forward osmosis membrane using chemical fertilizers as a draw solution

Abstract

Abstract The performance of a newly commercialized aquaporin (AQP)‐based biomimetic forward osmosis (FO) membrane was evaluated with several commonly used fertilizers ((CO (NH 2 ) 2 , KCl, CaCl 2 , (NH 4 ) 2 SO 4 and (NH 4 )2HPO 4 ) as a draw solutions (DSs) to verifying the possible implementation of this AQP‐FO membrane in the fertigation industry. Also, DS and feed solution (FS) concentrations were evaluated under FO and pressure retarded osmosis (PRO) operation modes. The results showed that CaCl 2 seems to be a more suitable DS in terms of the tradeoff between water flux and salt permeability, compared to the other DSs used in this study. However, KCl gained the highest performance in terms of water flux which was 13.9 and 24.1 Lm −2 h −1 in the FO and PRO mode, respectively. The performance of the AQP membrane in terms of water flux and reverse solute flux can be improved by modifying the structural and the membrane inhibitor layer characteristics for utilizing in commercial scales to compete with other available membranes of the FO process.