A thermo-sensitive draw solute including a polyoxyalkylene adduct represented by a general formula (1): R.sup.1O(AO).sub.nR.sup.2 (1), where R.sup.1 denotes a residue after withdrawal of a hydroxy group from a monovalent alcohol having a carbon number ranging from 6 to 13, R.sup.2 denotes a hydrogen atom or denotes an alkyl group or an alkenyl group having a carbon number ranging from 1 to 13, AO denotes an oxyalkylene group having a carbon number ranging from 2 to 4, n denotes an average added mole number of an alkylene oxide ranging from 1 to 235, and where n is two or more, the two or more AOs may be the same or different from each other.

The invention relates to osmotically driven membrane processes and systems and methods for recovering draw solutes in the osmotically driven membrane processes. Osmotically driven membrane processes involve the extraction of a solvent from a first solution by using a second concentrated solution to draw the solvent from the first solution across a semi-permeable membrane. Draw solute recovery may be carried out by various means to recover and recycle draw solutes contained within a diluted second solution and obtain a product solvent.

According to one embodiment, a working medium is provided. The working medium includes a first amine compound and a second amine compound. The first amine compound is a tertiary amine compound which consists of a carbon atom, a nitrogen atom and a hydrogen atom, and in which a ratio (C/N ratio) of a carbon atom number to a nitrogen atom number included in one molecule is in a range of 7 or more to 9 or less. The second amine compound is a tertiary amine compound which consists of a carbon atom, a nitrogen atom and a hydrogen atom, and in which a ratio (C/N ratio) of a carbon atom number to a nitrogen atom number included in one molecule is in a range of 5 or more to less than 7.

A system for reverse osmosis, RO, and for pressure retarded osmosis, PRO, includes: a RO subsystem (10) with a high-pressure RO chamber (11) and a low-pressure RO chamber (12) separated by a RO membrane (13), the high-pressure RO chamber (11) having a RO feed inlet (14) and a brine outlet (15) and the low-pressure RO chamber (12) having a permeate outlet (16); a PRO subsystem (20) with a high-pressure PRO chamber (21) and a low-pressure PRO chamber (22) separated by a PRO membrane (23), the high-pressure PRO chamber (21) having a draw inlet (24) and a draw outlet (25) and the low-pressure PRO chamber (22) having PRO feed inlet (26) and a PRO feed outlet (27); an induction motor (30) having a stator and a rotor, wherein the rotor is mechanically connected to an input shaft of a hydraulic pump (31) configured for providing a feed solution to the RO feed inlet (14) and to an output shaft of a hydraulic motor (32) configured for receiving a draw solution from the draw outlet (25). The invention further discloses a method for operating such system for RO/PRO and to the use of such system.

Embodiments disclosed herein are directed to methods and systems for treating wastewater via forward osmosis. By way of example, the methods and systems disclosed herein may be used to filter one or more precipitated salts and/or other particles from wastewater generated by power plants such as flue gas wastewater, oil and gas wastewater, and other industrial processes. For example, the methods and systems disclosed herein may be used to filter one or more precipitated salts from a wastewater feed concentrate formed during the forward osmosis process that is recirculated through at least one membrane module to continue the forward osmosis process. Filtering the one or more precipitated salts from the wastewater feed concentrate helps limit clogging of open channel feed spacer(s) of the at least one membrane module.

This invention relates to various membrane-based processes and their combinations, such as Forward Osmosis (FO), Reverse 5 Osmosis (RO), Nanofiltration (NF), Ultrafiltration (UF), Membrane Bioreactor (MBR), Osmotic Distillation (OD) and Membrane Distillation (MD), for various application of dilution, concentration, dewatering, separation, purification, fractionation or extraction applications of different solvents including 10 various sources of water, wastewater, active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs), food and beverage sources, dairy products etc. It is also applicable to all the industrial and domestic applications that involves recovering or water reclamation from inlet sources.

Provided are a composite forward osmosis membrane and a membrane module containing same. The composite forward osmosis membrane reduces salt back-diffusion and has high water-permeability, or is made of readily available materials and can be easily manufactured. Even when used at high pressure, separation between a substrate membrane support layer and an active separation layer does not occur in the composite forward osmosis membrane, and thus the composite forward osmosis membrane exhibits stable high performance.

The present disclosure relates to an apparatus and an apparatus assembly for assessing the suitability of a membrane, such as an osmotic membrane in an osmotic process. Furthermore, the apparatus, and apparatus assembly provide the means to optimise the parameters of an osmotic process, including the ability to gather key data for different membrane based osmotic systems to enable osmotic process and system optimisation.

A water treatment apparatus including: a forward osmosis device configured to allow a diluted draw solution to flow out and to discharge a water-containing solution; a heater configured to heat the diluted draw solution; a water separator configured to separate the diluted draw solution heated by the heater into a water-rich solution and the draw solution having water content lower than that of the water-rich solution; a cooler configured to cool a liquid and allow the liquid to flow out as a coolant; an inflow side heat exchanger configured to perform heat exchange between the coolant flowed out from the cooler and the draw solution flowed out from the water separator; and an outflow side heat exchanger configured to perform heat exchange between the diluted draw solution flowed out from the forward osmosis device and the water-rich solution flowed out from the water separator.

The invention relates to a system and method of use for concentrating a solution that is eluted from an ion exchange process (elution solution) during an ion exchange regeneration using the osmotic pressure of the salt saturator. This method recovers solvent from the elution solution that could be used in a future ion exchange regeneration process. The concentration of the elution solution may include the precipitation and removal of solids from the elution solution.