화학공학소재연구정보센터
Desalination, Vol.452, 149-158, 2019
Treatment of fracking wastewaters via forward osmosis: Evaluation of suitable organic draw solutions
The selection of an appropriate draw solution is crucial to the successful implementation of desalination for the treatment of highly saline fracking wastewaters via the forward osmosis (FO) process. In this report, four organic compounds (potassium acetate, potassium formate, sodium glycolate, and sodium propionate) were identified as candidate draw solutes for the first time for desalination of fracking wastewater by FO. Higher average FO water fluxes were achieved for the identified organic draw solutions (10.50-13.26 LMH for synthetic fracking wastewater and 19.05-24.05 LMH for real fracking wastewater) compared to commonly used draw solution, NaCl (average FO water flux: 8.25 LMH for synthetic fracking wastewater and 14.44 LMH for real fracking wastewater). Higher average FO water fluxes were obtained due to likely lower reverse salt fluxes for the organic draw solutions compared to NaCl. Higher FO water fluxes were achieved for the real fracking wastewater, as compared to the synthetic wastewater, due to higher osmotic pressure differences between feed and draw solutions. Membrane distillation could be used as a downstream separation technique in the FO process for recycling of the identified draw solutes.