ABSTRACT:-

The rapid increases in global energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions have
stimulated the exploration of renewable energy sources as alternative fuels. Osmotic pressure
gradient energy released from the mixing of water streams with different salinities is an
unexploited resource of renewable energy. By using a semipermeable membrane to control the
mixing process, the osmotic pressure gradient energy can be used in terms of electrical power
via pressure retarded osmosis (PRO) without causing adverse environmental impacts.
Pressure retarded osmosis is a membrane based technology that produces osmotic
power as a sustainable energy by using salt and fresh waters. Pretreatment reduces membrane
fouling as the main challenge in Pressure Retarded Osmosis (PRO). In this research,
ultrafiltration and a sand filter were used for removing total organic carbon (TOC), turbidity,
and hardness.. In all experiments, it was indicated that ultrafiltration had better removal
efficiency and consequently more potential for osmotic power generation process
improvement.
 INTRODUCTION:-

Using renewable energies is a well-known way for reducing the amount of green house
gases in the world .Osmotic power or salinity gradient energy as a renewable source of energy
has attracted a lot of attention recently .This energy is generated by mixing fresh and
saltwater.The difference in the chemical potential of the fresh water and the draw solution
causes a driving force that transfers water from the fresh side to the draw side. Osmotic
pressure gradient energy exploits the free energy released during the mixing of water streams
with different salinities. This energy could be harvested for power generation using membrane
based technologies such as pressure retarded osmosis (PRO) and reverse electrodialysis . The
worldwide potential for producing the power from mixingof sea and river water is more than 2
TW.
Usually river water, and brackish water are used as feed waters in the PRO
processes.These waters generally contain high amounts of colloidal particles, organic and
inorganic materials that cause critical fouling effects on the performance of the system by
reducing the permeate flux and power density. Therefore, it is important to control and
diminish the membrane fouling in PRO process .Recently, there has been some progress for
developing the membrane materials in order to reduce the fouling in PRO membranes.
Although, these membranes have demonstrated favorable results at lab scale, there are still
some Challenges in terms of durability and upscaling of these new membranes .Pre-treatment
is a parameter which can control the membrane fouling .As it was mentioned, fouling is a main
challenge in membrane processes and imposes high cost to the system in termsof energy
consumption. One way to decrease fouling and cost is using an appropriate pretreatment
method.
Classification of Osmotic Processes:-
The osmosis phenomenon describes the spontaneous water transport across a semipermeable
barrier from a feed stream of higher chemical potential (i.e., low solute concentration) into
another stream of lower chemical potential (i.e., high solute concentration) [3-6,11-13,23]. The
latter solution with lower water chemical potential is termed as the draw solution, while the
former one as the feed. The semipermeable barrier generally represents a membrane that
selectively allows water transport but restricts the passage of solutes. During the osmosis
process, the draw solution is rapidly diluted by the permeate water, while the feed is
concentrated. This process will continue until the chemical potential across the membrane
reaches the equilibrium. The osmotic pressure is defined as the hydrostatic pressure that would
stop the solvent (i.e., water) transport across the membrane when it is applied tothe draw
solution. The osmotic pressure (π) of a solution can be calculated via van’t Hoff equation as
π = icRT

where i is the van’t Hoff factor, c is the molar concentration (mol L-1), R is the universal gas
constant (8.31441 N m mol-1 K-1), T is the absolute temperature (K). Correspondingly, the
osmotic pressure of seawater at 25 °C is between 25 and 33 bar since the NaCl concentration
varies from 3.0 to 4.0 wt. % in different locations. The RO retentate from SWRO plants may
contain salt ranging from 6.0 to 7.0 wt. %,indicating higher osmotic pressures of 50-59 bar.

Three possible osmotic processes that happen between fresh water and salty water partitioned
by a semipermeable membrane . The top nature occurring process is called forward osmosis
(FO) during which water spontaneously transports across the membrane driven by the osmotic
pressure gradient (Δπ) between the two solutions. When a hydrostatic pressure (ΔP) is applied
to the salty water side, the permeate water is retarded and even ceased when ΔP is equal to
Δπ. At any stage when ΔP is between 0 and Δπ, water still flows into the salty water because Δπ
remains larger than ΔP.
CONCLUSIONS:-
In this research, the performance of two pretreatment methods(ultrafiltration and
multimedia sand filter) were investigated and compared in terms of removing TOC,
turbidity, and hardness. In addition, the effects of parameters such as pressure, required
specific energy, and fouling were studied.Ultrafiltration indicates better removal
efficiency for TOC,hardness and turbidity compared to multimedia sand filter. Pressure as
an operating factor played an important role in the ultra-filtration system process and
multimedia sand filter. By increasing the pressure, the fluxes increased as well. In other
words,reduction of permeate flux in ultrafiltration is less and this makes the ultrafiltration
more desirable than the multimedia sand filter.Based on the results, the fouling in PRO
membranes was much less when the used feed water was prepared from ultrafiltration
instead of multimedia sand filter. Although, the estimated cost for producing electricity
from osmotic power using multimedia sand filter as a pretreatment method is less than
ultrafiltration, using ultra-filtration as a pretreatment method can improve and control
the PRO membrane fouling and osmotic power generation. It can be concluded that the
higher performance of the ultrafiltration, that although more expensive in energy cost,
makes it a better option for producing osmotic power.