Events Calendar

USC Water Institute Seminar

Speaker: Yoram Cohen , Department of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering, Water Technology Center, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA, 90095 Email: yoram@ucla.edu

Talk Title: Strategies for RO Process Integration and Cost Reduction

Abstract: The widespread use of membrane filtration and desalination RO desalination is rapidly gaining momentum in water reuse application including municipal wastewater and agricultural drainage (AD) water reclamation and reuse. Also, RO desalination of both seawater and inland brackish water is currently being considered in various locations around the world, with a growing number of large-scale desalination plants in the planning and/or construction stages. Considerable efforts, dating back to the initial days of RO development in the early 1960s, have been devoted to minimizing the energy consumption of water desalination, development of fouling and chlorine resistant membranes, as well as deployment of effective feed pretreatment. Reduction of the cost of RO desalination necessitates lowering process energy consumption, decreasing the volume of the generated concentrate stream (specifically for inland water desalination) and improving feed filtration effectiveness. At the same time one must meet the target permeate water quality while keeping overall water production cost at a reasonable level. Accordingly, the present seminar presents a formalized theoretical framework to systematically evaluate various options for minimizing RO energy consumption (with and without energy recovery devices), considering membrane module cost and the challenge of brine management. A comparison is presented of single versus multi-stage and multi-pass membrane desalting including considerations of stream mixing and recycling. An important element of robust RO process operation requires adequate process monitoring and control and dynamic optimization that respond (in real-time) to changing feed water conditions and product quality requirements. Recent advances have made it feasible to develop and deploy smart water desalination systems that enable effective integration and robust operation (with added automated fault detection and self-corrective action) of integrated UF and RO systems with reduced use of chemical cleaning and fault detection. Such systems and operational strategies can be utilized for distributed water desalination systems of reduced footprint. Results from both laboratory and field studies, for both agricultural and municipal wastewaters, with recently developed smart water desalination systems will be presented to demonstrate the feasibility of improving RO process optimization and operability for challenging water sources of high fouling and scaling propensities and for high recovery operation for brackish water desalting. In addition, reduction of the cost of concentrate management in inland water desalination will be discussed with respect to a newly developed chemically enhanced seeded precipitation (CESP) for high recovery desalination. Based on the above theoretical and field studies, various areas of further necessary improvements in RO desalination will be discussed focusing on needed reduction in process costs and improved operability for both large-scale and small-scale distributed systems.



Biography: Dr. Yoram Cohen received his B.A.Sc., M.A.Sc., in 1975 and 1977, respectively, both in Chemical Engineering, from the University of Toronto, and his Ph.D. from the University of Delaware in 1981. He has been on the Faculty of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) since 1981. He is the founder and Director of the Water Technology Research Center and the Center for Environmental Risk Reduction, and a member of the UCLA/National Science Foundation (NSF) Center for the Environmental Implications of Nanotechnology (CEIN). Dr. Cohen is an Adjunct Professor at Ben-Gurion University and a member of the International Advisory Committee to the Stephen and Nancy Grand Water Research Institute at the Technion. He was a Visiting Professor at the Technion (1987-1988), at Universitat Rovira i Virgili (1944) and a Distinguished Visiting Professor at Victoria University (2006). Dr. Cohen is a UCLA Luskin Scholar and a recipient of the 2008 Ann C. Rosenfield Community Partnership Prize in recognition of his environmental research. He received the 2003 Lawrence K. Cecil award in Environmental Chemical Engineering from the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE), as well as the AIChE Separations Division Outstanding Paper Award (1997 and 2009). In 2008 he received a County of Los Angeles Commendation (2008), a State of California Senate Certificate of Recognition, and a Certificate of Special Congressional Recognition (US) for contributing to legislation to protect public health and dedicated service to the Los Angeles community. Dr. Cohen has published over one hundred and fifty research papers and book chapters in water technology, separations processes, transport phenomena, polymer science, surface nano-structuring and environmental engineering. He is also the Editor of three environmental volumes. Dr. Cohen developed patented technologies in membrane synthesis, reverse osmosis desalination, surface nanostructuring and chemical sensors. He has served on numerous Government Advisory Committees, and organized over thirty scientific conferences, including the 2008 International Congress on Membranes and membrane processes (ICOM) and the 2009 West Coast Water Technology Transfer workshop. He also was appointed as the Meeting Program Chair of the 2010 AIChE Meeting.

Host: Ellis Meng

Location: Seaver Science Library (SSL) - 150

Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Mischalgrace Diasanta