Predictive Models to Aid in Design of Membrane Systems for Organic Micropollutants Removal

Reverse osmosis (RO) and nanofiltration (NF) membranes are becoming increasingly widespread in water treatment. For drinking water augmentation projects in the United States, Singapore and Australia treatment using microfiltration (MF) pretreatment followed by RO is the industry standard. Past research projects have demonstrated that a limitation of RO and NF is the incomplete removal of various organic solutes, such as certain disinfection by-products, pharmaceutical residues, household chemicals, and endocrine disrupting compounds. The project develops models that can be used, a priori, to predict the rejection of a wide variety of organic compounds by NF and RO membranes.

Originally funded as WERF project Reuse-06-09.