MEMBRANE TECHNOLOGY FOR OSMOTIC POWER GENERATION BY PRESSURE RETARDED OSMOSIS

Abstract

Osmotic power holds great promise as a clean, sustainable and abundant energy resource. Pressure retarded osmosis (PRO) is a strong candidate to convert chemical potential in natural salinity gradients to useful work. In such a process, water transports from a low-salinity feed solution across a semi-permeable membrane to a high-salinity draw solution against an applied hydraulic pressure. The increased volume of the diluted draw solution is a form of mechanical energy, which can be recovered by energy transfer devices. The objective of this dissertation is to enhance the efficiency of harvesting the salinity-gradient energy for osmotic power generation via PRO by (1) conducting fundamental studies of mass transport; (2) developing a high performance PRO membrane; and (3) constructing a novel hybrid system to tackle the fouling issue in real operating environments.