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Reverse Osmosis and Ultra Filtration Class Lecture

Reverse osmosis is a process that uses a semipermeable membrane to separate solutes from solvents in a solution. Water molecules can pass through the membrane, which has pores less than 1 nm in radius, but electrolytes like sodium chloride cannot. When pressure greater than osmotic pressure is applied to the solution, pure water flows through the membrane from the solution to the pure water side. This process is called reverse osmosis and is commonly used to desalinate seawater to produce drinking water. Ultrafiltration uses the same principles but with larger pore sizes from 1-100 nm to separate and concentrate macromolecules.

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5K views7 pages

Reverse Osmosis and Ultra Filtration Class Lecture

Reverse osmosis is a process that uses a semipermeable membrane to separate solutes from solvents in a solution. Water molecules can pass through the membrane, which has pores less than 1 nm in radius, but electrolytes like sodium chloride cannot. When pressure greater than osmotic pressure is applied to the solution, pure water flows through the membrane from the solution to the pure water side. This process is called reverse osmosis and is commonly used to desalinate seawater to produce drinking water. Ultrafiltration uses the same principles but with larger pore sizes from 1-100 nm to separate and concentrate macromolecules.

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nabil
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 Reverse osmosis is a process to separate solute and solvent components in the solution.

 Although the solvent is usually water, it is not necessarily restricted to water.  The pore radius of the membrane is less than 1 nm.  While solvent water molecules, whose radius is about one tenth of 1 nm, can pass through the membrane freely, electrolyte solutes, such as sodium chloride and organic solutes that contain more than one hydrophilic functional group in the molecule (sucrose, for example), can not pass though the membrane. These solutes are either rejected from the membrane surface, or they are more strongly attracted to the solvent water phase to the membrane surface.

The preferential sorption of water molecules at the solventmembrane interface, which is caused by the interaction force working between the membrane-solvent-solute, is therefore responsible for the separation.  Polymeric materials such as cellulose acetate and aromatic polyamide are typically used for the preparation of reverse osmosis membranes.  When a membrane is placed between pure water and an aqueous sodium chloride solution, water flows from the chamber filled with pure water to that filled with the sodium chloride solution, whereas sodium chloride does not flow (Figure 1a). As water flows into the sodium chloride solution chamber, the water level of the solution increases until the flow of pure water stops (Figure 1b) at the steady state.

The difference between the water level of the sodium chloride solution and that of pure water at the steady state, when converted to hydrostatic pressure, is called osmotic pressure.  When a pressure higher than the osmotic pressure is applied to the sodium chloride solution, the flow of pure water is reversed: the flow from the sodium chloride solution to the pure water begins to occur. There is no flow of sodium chloride through the membrane. As a result, pure water can be obtained from the sodium chloride solution. The above separation process is called reverse osmosis.  The most successful application of the reverse osmosis process is in the production of drinking water from seawater.  This process is known as seawater desalination and is currently producing millions of gallons of potable water daily in the Middle East.

Fishing boats, ocean liners, and submarines also carry reverse osmosis units to obtain potable water from the sea.  Ultrafiltration is a process based on the same principle as that of reverse osmosis. The main difference between reverse osmosis and ultrafiltration is that ultrafiltration membranes have larger pore sizes than reverse osmosis membranes, ranging from 1 to 100 nm.  Ultrafiltration membranes are used for the separation and concentration of macromolecules and colloidal particles.  Osmotic pressures of macromolecules are much smaller than those of small solute molecules, and therefore operating pressures applied in the ultrafiltration process are usually much lower than those applied in the reverse osmosis process.

Membranes having pore sizes between those for reverse osmosis and ultrafiltration membranes are sometimes called nanofiltration membranes. The size of the solute molecules that are separated from water, and the range of operating pressures, are also between those for reverse osmosis and ultrafiltration.  Ultrafiltration membranes are prepared from polymeric materials such as polysulfone, polyethersulfone, polyacrylonitrile, and cellulosic polymers.  Inorganic materials such as alumina can also be used for ultrafiltration membranes.  Typical applications of ultrafiltration processes are the treatment of electroplating rinse water, the treatment of cheese whey, and the treatment of waste water from the pulp and paper industry.

The pore sizes of microfiltration membranes are even larger than those of ultrafiltration membranes and range from 0.1 m (100 nm) to several m. The sizes of the particles separated by microfiltration membranes are therefore even larger than those separated by ultrafiltration membranes.

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