DES-12828; No of Pages 10

Desalination xxx (2016) xxxxxx

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Desalination

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/desal

Computational uid dynamics (CFD) based modelling of osmotic energy generation

using pressure retarded osmosis (PRO)
Yang Wang a, Wei He a,b,, Hai Zhu c
a
School of Engineering and Material Science, Queen Mary University of London, London E1 4NS, UK
b
School of Engineering, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, UK
c
College of Water Conservancy and Hydropower Engineering, Hohai University, Nanjing 210098, China

H I G H L I G H T S

A CFD based model of PRO is developed.

ECP effect is analysed with respect to different operating pressures.
Effects of cross-ow velocities are analysed by CFD modelling.
Comparisons between CFD model and semi-analytic model are made.

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: This work presents a numerical study on the pressure retarded osmosis (PRO) using computational uid
Received 29 October 2015 dynamics (CFD) modelling. First, a numerical solver based on CFD to describe the mass transfer across the
Received in revised form 30 January 2016 membrane and the hydrodynamics in the ow channels is developed and validated with the previous
Accepted 2 February 2016
publications. Several key steps of the implementation in OpenFOAM are also discussed. Using the validated
Available online xxxx
CFD solver, different operating parameters are investigated by simulations. According to the obtained concentra-
Keywords:
tion and ow elds with different applied pressures, a lower hydraulic pressure causes a more signicant
Computer uid dynamics external concentration polarization (ECP) effect at the draw side. In addition, effects of the cross-ow velocities
Pressure retarded osmosis are also studied with respect to the ECP and the overall performance of the PRO. Furthermore, two models of the
Concentration polarization PRO, CFD model and semi-analytic model, are compared. The results indicated the good performance of the
Cross-ow velocity semi-analytic model to approximate the overall performance of the PRO with a relatively lower permeable
Semi-analytic model membrane. However, with the improvement on the membrane properties, large deviations of the averaged
membrane power density are found between the two models.
2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction it has no signicant carbon dioxide emission during the operation.

Osmotic energy from salinity gradients, also called salinity energy
or blue energy, has drawn signicant attention in recent years. The
osmotic power possesses several advantages: 1) a great potential ener-
gy capacity. It was estimated to be 2 TW considering the ow rate of
river water into oceans [1], which is about 12% of the current world
energy consumption (~ 13,000 Mtoe) based on the data from Global
Energy Statistical Yearbook 2015 [2]. Specically, the potential of
osmotic energy production at the Lake Urmia, Iran, was estimated
between 400 to 1000 MW, while the technical potential is expected to
be between 40% and 50% of that [3]. 2) As a renewable energy source,
Corresponding author at: School of Engineering, University of Warwick, Coventry, CV4
7AL, UK.
E-mail addresses: yang.wang@qmul.ac.uk (Y. Wang), w.he.1@warwick.ac.uk (W. He),
h.zhu@hhu.edu.cn (H. Zhu).
3) Compared to other renewable energy sources, such as solar and
wind, osmotic energy has less uctuation and disturbance. Among the
approaches to harvest this promising power, pressure retarded osmosis
(PRO) is one of the most explored technologies [4]. PRO applies a hy-
draulic pressure on a draw stream to extract energy from a permeate
stream which becomes pressurized as it enters the draw because of a
trans-membrane osmotic pressure difference, converting the chemical
potential across the membrane into hydraulic potential of the perme-
ation [5,6]. In addition to the advantages of osmotic energy, as a mem-
ber in the family of osmosis membrane process which also includes
reverse osmosis (RO) and forward osmosis (FO), PRO is inherently com-
patible and beneting to be hybridized with RO or/and FO in applica-
tions of desalination, brine management and recycle of impaired
water and wastewater. Performance of these hybrid systems can be sig-
nicantly improved in both processes of osmotic energy and separation.
After a rapid development of PRO in the last decade, it started to be

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.desal.2016.02.002
0011-9164/ 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Please cite this article as: Y. Wang, et al., Computational uid dynamics (CFD) based modelling of osmotic energy generation using pressure
retarded osmosis (PRO), Desalination (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.desal.2016.02.002
2 Y. Wang et al. / Desalination xxx (2016) xxxxxx
utilized in reality [7]. In 2009, the world's rst PRO plant was launched
in Norway with a 4 kW capacity, which demonstrated the technical
capability of osmotic energy generation using PRO [8]. But the economic
viability of the PRO plant needs to be improved by further investigations
on the development of high performance membrane and efcient
systems [9]. Recently, a membrane distillation (MD) and PRO hybrid
desalination demonstration plant is being constructed in Korea [10].
Previous studies of PRO mainly focused on the development and
fabrication of the high performance membrane, and the mathematical
modelling of the PRO process using analytic or semi-analytic models.
In a lab-scale PRO process, transportation phenomena of water and
solute across the membrane were investigated and evaluated. These
studies aimed to improve the membrane properties and reduce the
detrimental effects during the mass transfer so as to enhance the perfor-
mance. These detrimental effects include the internal concentration
polarization (ICP) inside the support layer, external concentration
polarization (ECP) on the draw solution side near the membrane
surface, and the reverse solute permeation (RSP) across the membrane.
Particularly in PRO, Yip et al. developed a systematic study on these
performance limiting effects and veried the ux models of the water
and solute considering all the ICP, ECP and RSP with the experimental
results of different membrane properties [11]. Therefore, on the basis
of the validated transportation equations, model development and
mathematical modelling has become an important approach to study
the scale-up process performance [12,13]. In order to develop a model
to describe the scale-up PRO, several investigations were carried out
to identify the limiting osmotic energy capacity of PRO [14,15], and to
evaluate process performance considering both detrimental effects in
the mass transfer [1618] and coupled effect of the increased process
scale [19]. Recently, an iso-watt diagram for PRO performance evalua-
tion with respect to the membrane characteristics and site specic
design parameter was constructed by simulation and demonstrated to
be a useful tool for goal-oriented membrane development [20]. The
effect of the operating temperature on hydrodynamics and membrane
parameters in PRO was also studied via numerical simulation [21]
and validated with the experimental results [22]. In addition to the
numerical modelling of the stand-alone PRO process, hybrid ROPRO
conguration is also widely investigated because of the inherently
reciprocal advantages of the two processes. A module-scale PRO was
studied by both simulation and experiment in a hybrid ROPRO process
[23,24]. A preliminary study of a solar assisted SWROPRO desalination
plant was investigated and a case study with real data in Perth Australia
was modelled [25].
In previous modelling based studies, a one-dimension semi-
analytical model describing the ICP, ECP and RSP was used to simu-
late non-linear transport process. It was assumed that the variation
of the ow rate is only considered along the bulk ow direction,
indicating a simplied one-dimension model. Therefore, average
bulk ows in the draw and feed channels were employed. All these
studies focused on the mass transfer and decoupled the permeation
from the hydrodynamics of the ow. Because of a relatively small
order of magnitude of the water permeation compared to the bulk
ows, the model is applicable in preliminary design and analysis.
However, the non-linear mass transfer of the water and solution
through the membrane is presumably linked to the hydrodynamics
of the membrane channel [26]. Multiple physical phenomena, such
as convection and diffusion of the solute in membrane ow channels,
strongly couple the hydrodynamic condition of the membrane chan-
nel with the permeations across the membrane. Therefore, accurate
modelling of the ow and concentration polarization (CP) in PRO
considering the complex coupling in the ow equations needs to be
carried out. To this end, computational uid dynamics (CFD) pro-
vides a generic technique to capture these coupled effects. Actually,
CFD based modelling has been used in several membrane systems.
From literatures, it is found a large number of CFD based modelling
in RO membrane process. In the early of 2000s', Wiley et al. carried
Please cite this article as: Y. Wang, et al., Computational uid dynamics (CFD) based modelling of osmotic energy generation using pressure
retarded osmosis (PRO), Desalination (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.desal.2016.02.002
out a series of numerical modelling of RO membrane process using
nite volume method (FVM) based CFX focusing on model develop-
ment and verication [27], effects of hydrodynamics [28,29]
and membrane properties [30], and optimization of spacers [31].
Since then, analysis of the RO membrane process performance and
optimization of spacers using CFD in membrane channels have be-
come popular topics in the design of membrane module [3239].
Subramani et al. carried out CFD modelling using COMSOL and
found the preferable performance of cavity and submerge spacers
which are better than zigzag under the condition simulated [40].
Ishigami and Matsuyama introduced a reasonable permeable
wall boundary condition (BC) into a numerical simulation of RO
using user dened function in FLUENT [32]. Recently, based on CFD
modelling, the coupling effects of hydrodynamics on CP and water
permeation in FO membrane process were identied [4143] and
different characteristics of various types of spacers on CP started to
be elucidated [44]. Gruber et al. demonstrated the capability of a
CFD model to simulate FO system with asymmetric membrane [41].
Sagiv et al. suggested that assessment of FO performance in long
channels through CFD on the basis of experimental measured mem-
brane parameters, is essential for full-scale plant design for minimiz-
ing salt leakage and improving the performance [43]. Moreover,
along with the PRO to harness salinity energy, another membrane
process, reverse electrodialysis (RED), has been widely studied
using CFD to identify the coupled effect of CP and hydrodynamics
[4547] and to improve the module design [48]. These works have
demonstrated the robustness, reliability and efciency of using mod-
ern numerical approaches to obtain solutions of the ow problems in
membrane systems [49]. However, to the horizon of the authors,
there is no study that addressed the CFD based modelling on CP,
and effects of hydrodynamics in PRO ow channels from the literatures.
All the simulations and modelling of the PRO process are based on
zero-dimension or one dimension semi-analytical models. To this end,
CFD studies of PRO, including the model development and simulations,
are needed to be carried out to ll the gap of knowledge.
Therefore, the objective of this study is to carry out the CFD
modelling in the PRO membrane process, especially to extend the
commonly used semi-analytical model into a CFD model which
resolves the coupled hydrodynamic effect on CP and the overall
performance of the osmotic energy generation. A generic CFD meth-
od to simulate the PRO is proposed in this study, which consists of
governing equations and BCs. Furthermore, on the basis of the CFD
model, simulations concentrating on the local and overall process
performance of a spacer-free membrane module are investigated.
Coupled effects of the cross-ow velocities and the operational
hydraulic pressures are studied by simulations. Finally, a comparison
between the semi-analytic model and CFD based model is also
carried out.
2. CFD based model development
2.1. Governing equations and boundary conditions
The ow in the membrane channels of both draw and feed
solution is governed by the equations for conservation of mass,
momentum, and solute mass fraction. Mass transfer through the
membrane is also described by these equations. The model is capable
to describe the 3D physical problems, however, in the present work,
due to the low Reynolds numbers studied (maximum Reynolds
number is approximated 300 in terms of the height of the ow
channel), 2D cases are carried out for the computation efciency.
Therefore, the steady-state governing equations in 2D Cartesian
coordinates can be expressed as:
u v
0 1
x y
 Y. Wang et al. / Desalination xxx (2016) xxxxxx 3

    
uu uv p u u v A schematic cross-ow chamber is illustrated in Fig. 1 in which a
2 2
x y x x x y y x PRO process without spacer is selected and studied. The dimension of
   the chamber is L h for each channel. The membrane segment is Lmem
2 u v
and located in the middle of the chamber. The height of both draw
3 x x y
and feed channels is h. Depending on different ow directions of the
     feed solution, co-current and counter-counter ow schemes can be
uv vv p u u v
2 3 classied. Due to the high efciency of the counter-current ow scheme,
x y y y y x y x it is selected for all simulations in this work.
  
2 u v In an ideal PRO process, at the steady-state operation, the concentra-

3 y x y tion of the salinity in each solution is distributed homogenously so that
no concentration difference is assumed between the bulks and the ows
   
uc vc c c near the surface of the membrane. Also the membrane is assumed to be
DAB DAB 4 fully rejected of the salt. However, during the mass exchange process in
x y x x y y
a PRO process, as illustrated in Fig. 1, with the current membrane
performance, the ICP, ECP and RSP effects cannot be ignored. Due to
where x and y are the components in 2D Cartesian coordinates, u and these performance limiting effects, as shown in Fig. 1, the concentration
v are components of the velocity elds, p is the pressure, C is the salt difference across the surfaces of the membrane is lower than the differ-
concentration, is the density, DAB is the diffusion coefcient, and ence between the bulk solutions. According to Yip et al.'s investigation,
is the viscosity. From the previous researches, the effect of the all the performance limiting phenomena on water ux and power
gravity is insignicant in the range of salinity studied [27,50]. Thus, density of PRO process can be estimated [51]. The approximation of
for simplicity, the source terms of the gravity are excluded in the ICP effect is based on solving a one-dimension convectiondiffusion
momentum equations [36]. problem in the support layer with experimental and empirical BCs and
From previous literatures and the semi-analytic modelling, it is well parameters. According to Yip et al.s work [51], due to the ICP effect in
known that the asymmetric structure and orientation of the membrane the porous support layer, the concentration of the feed solution near
affect the permeation through the membrane. In a PRO process, the ac- to the membrane surface can be expressed as
tive layer of the membrane faces to the draw channel and the support
layer of the membrane faces to the feed ow channel. It is usually called      
JW S B
JW S
AL-DS orientation. In this study, the thickness of the membrane is not c F;m c F;b exp cD;m c F;m exp 1 6
D JW D
resolved because of the insignicant dependence of the ow inside of
the membrane on the external ows [41]. And hence, the membrane where c F;b is the concentration of the bulk feed solution, B is the salt per-
is considered as a two-dimensional plane. The roughness of the mem- meability coefcient, D is the bulk diffusion coefcient, and S ts = is
brane surface is not considered and the surfaces are assumed to be the support layer structural parameter in which ts is the thickness of the
smooth. Moreover, the water ux across the membrane depends on porous layer, and are the tortuosity and porosity of the support layer
the concentration of the solution near both surfaces of the membrane of the membrane respectively.
in the two channels, the applied hydraulic pressure on the draw The ICP modulus represented by Eq. (6) is obtained based on the
solution and the membrane properties. Therefore, the water ux can semi-analytic solution of the convectiondiffusion equation within the
be expressed, support layer. It is a result of the simplied ow and mass transfer

through the porous layer. Nevertheless, due to the insignicant coupling
JW A D;m F;m P 5 between the external ow and the CP within the support layer [41] to-
gether with a spacer-free conguration studied in this work, the ICP ef-
where D,m and F,m are the osmotic pressure of the solution next to the fect as described by Eq. (6) appropriately illustrates how the membrane
membrane surfaces in the draw and feed solution, respectively. The properties (A, B and S) affect the concentration difference across the
osmotic pressure is determined by the salt concentration. A is the support layer and further inuence the water permeation.
water permeability coefcient of the membrane and P is the hydraulic Moreover, similar to the derivation of Eq. (6), a semi-analytically
pressure difference across the membrane. approximated concentration of the draw near the membrane surface

Fig. 1. Schematic membrane chamber.

Please cite this article as: Y. Wang, et al., Computational uid dynamics (CFD) based modelling of osmotic energy generation using pressure
retarded osmosis (PRO), Desalination (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.desal.2016.02.002
4 Y. Wang et al. / Desalination xxx (2016) xxxxxx

Table 1 variations also need to be considered. This is very important to ensure

Boundary conditions of the CFD model of PRO. that the mass ux is conserved through the membrane.
Boundary Boundary conditions Viscosity, diffusion coefcient, density and osmotic pressure of the
solution are varied with respect to different concentrations. In this
Inlet u 6u hy 1 hy; v 0; c ci;0
study, both solutions of the draw and the feed are assumed to be binary
Outlet u
n
v
0; n 0; c
n
i
0;
Wall (non-membrane) c
mixture of water and NaCl. These parameters used in this study are
u 0; v 0; n 0;
assumed to be functions of the salt concentration shown below, based
Membrane (draw channel) u 0; v vD v F F ;
D
on empirical expressions for the physical properties of a NaCl solution
D D c
y
D
D cD;m vD BcD;m c F;m 0;
at 25 C [41,52].
Membrane (feed side) u 0; v v F ACOS cD;m c F;m P;
F D cyF F c F;m v F BcD;m c F;m 0
805:1  105 c 10
Note: u is the mean velocity at the inlet. n is the norm vector. COS is the modied van't
Hoff coefcient.
0:89  103 1 1:63c 11

can be obtained by solving another one dimension convectiondiffusion  

D max 1:61  109 114c; 1:45  109 12
equation in the external concentration polarization boundary layer.
According to the semi-analytical model [51], the concentration difference
across the membrane surfaces can be expressed, 997:1 694c 13

cD expJW =kc F exp JW S=D The expressions (10)(13) are valid for salt fraction of NaCl up to
cD;m c F;m 7
B 0.09, which is equivalent to a NaCl concentration of approximately
1 exp JW S=D exp JW =k
JW 1.6 M [41].

where k D= is the boundary layer mass transfer coefcient, and is
boundary layer thickness. Therefore, Eq. (7) is capable to estimate the
realistic concentration difference across the membrane based on several
experimental measurements, and it is the core of the semi-analytic
model. In the semi-analytic model, the ICP and ECP effects are presented
by the rst and second terms in the numerator of RHS of Eq. (7), and the
RSP effect is estimated by the expression of the denominator.
Furthermore, the reverse solute ux, JS, through the membrane is
only dependent on the concentration difference across the membrane,
which is


JS B cD;m c F;m :
As called RSP, the direction of the solute ux in a PRO process, is
opposite of the water permeation. At both surfaces of the asymmetric
membrane in the draw and feed ow channels, based on the conserva-
tion of the solute ux which includes both convective and diffusive ux,
a mass balance of solute can be made,
c solver based on the algorithm introduced above to solve the governing
m D m Cm JW JS :
y equations is implemented in OpenFOAM.
In this study, a CFD model is used to capture the ECP effects on both
draw and feed sides of the membrane. Therefore, on the basis of the
equations derived in Eqs. (5), (6), (8) and (9), BCs used in the CFD
modelling of PRO can be obtained, which are listed in Table 1. A fully
developed parabolic velocity prole and a salt concentration are
specied in the inlet of each ow channel. Zero-gradient BC is used to
describe the velocity, pressure and concentration at the outlet. For
non-membrane walls, the no slip and no solute ux BCs are applied.
For the BCs on the both sides of the membrane, according to the
mass balance as shown in Eq. (9), the density and diffusion coefcient
2.2. Numerical solver and algorithm
CFD package used in this study is the open source toolkit
OpenFOAM (Open Field Operation and Manipulation). OpenFOAM is
a free, open source CFD software developed by OpenCFD Ltd. and ESI
Group and distributed by the OpenFOAM Foundation [53]. OpenFOAM
has progressed signicantly over the last 40 years, offering an easily
extendable framework with an extensive range of features and robust
numerical algorithms. Due to the difference of the ow in membrane
processes from the traditional ow problems, such as aerodynamics,
custom implementation of the CFD model of PRO is needed.
8 The simulation is carried out using the OpenFOAM library, version
2.2.0. The coupled continuity and NavierStokes equations are solved
by SIMPLE algorithm. The convectiondiffusion equation for the solute
transfer is solved within the SIMPLE loop. Membrane BCs are explicitly
implemented using eld values from previous time-step, and the
water ux and solute ux are also obtained explicitly based on the
eld values and previous uxes. Density, viscosity and diffusion coef-
cients are constant during the inner iteration and updated at the end
of the outer iteration within the SIMPLE loop. Therefore, a FOAM-like
9
In addition, the appropriate BCs and internal elds of the membrane
process are achieved using pre-processing utilities in OpenFOAM, and
libraries of groovyBC and funkySetFields in swak4Foam toolkit [54]. In
the simulations, in order to achieve the fully mapped elds between
the two patches representing the two sides of the membrane in the
two ow channels, rst of all, the two patches representing membrane
in the two ow channels are generated using pre-processing utility
topoSet and createBafes in OpenFOAM. In this study, the internal faces
representing membrane are selected and grouped by topoSet rst and
split into two boundary faces in the two ow channels respectively by
createBafes. Based on the modication of the mesh, the type of the

Fig. 2. Geometry of the cases in publication for validation of the CFD solver used in this study.

Please cite this article as: Y. Wang, et al., Computational uid dynamics (CFD) based modelling of osmotic energy generation using pressure
retarded osmosis (PRO), Desalination (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.desal.2016.02.002
 Y. Wang et al. / Desalination xxx (2016) xxxxxx 5

Table 2
Parameters of the published cases in RO and FO for validation of the CFD model in
this study.
Parameters RO [52]
Membrane water permeability coefcient, 2 1010
A, m  s1  Pa 1 
Membrane solute permeability coefcient, N/A
B, m  s1 
Diffusion resistivity, K, s  m1  N/A
Membrane solute rejection 95%
Applied hydraulic pressure, P, [Pa] 5 105
Solute fraction (NaCl) of the concentrated solution 0.002
Solute fraction of the dilute solution 0 0.0001
two patches representing the membrane in the two channels are able to
be set as mapped. Then, the BCs of the membrane as shown in Table 1
are implemented using groovyBC toolkit. Using the toolkit, it is impor-
tant to note, that no form of patch-to-patch interpolation of the elds
is performed. If the number of faces on the local and remote patches is
not identical, entire elds cannot be mirrored from remote patches to
local patches. And hence an area weighted average of the target eld
of the remote patch is used. On the other hand, with the identical
number of faces on the remote patch and the local patch, which is the
case in the simulations of this study, the remote elds can be directly
mapped onto the local patch.
It has been argued to use turbulence model in membrane chambers
because the isotropic turbulence models are only suited for high
Reynolds number (Re N 30,000) [49]. All simulations carried out in
this study are well below the suited Reynolds number for turbulence
and inclusion of turbulence is beyond the scope of this work. The
range of the Reynolds numbers (which is in terms of height of the
membrane channel) considered in this work is below 300. Thus, laminar
ow model is used for all simulations. The global residue is 106 for all
simulations. All the simulations are computed by submitting serial
computational jobs to Apocrita, a cluster at Queen Mary University
of London. Computation time of the case is varied depending on the
different BCs and initial conditions used and the computational
resources required and allocated from the cluster, generally in the
range of 15 h.
3. Validation of the CFD-based model
At rst, the CFD solver developed and implemented for governing
equations is validated. Two published results of CFD modelling of both
RO [50,52] and FO process [41] are used to verify the numerical method
used in the present work. The geometry of the RO and FO cases are
illustrated in Fig. 2(a) and (b), respectively. The geometric parameters
are also shown in the gure, including the length of the ow channel
and membrane, and the height of the ow channel. The parameters
used in the two validation cases are listed in Table 2.
Table 3
Parameters of the membrane module and membrane properties.
Parameter Value
FO [41]
Length of the membrane channel, L [cm] 10
1 1012 Height of the membrane channel, h [mm] 3
Length of the membrane, Lmem [cm] 6
1 107 Salt fraction (NaCl) of the draw solution at the inlet 0.035
Salt fraction (NaCl) of the feed solution at the inlet 0.0001
0.5 Membrane water permeability coefcient, A m3  m2  Pa1  s1  4.83 1012
N/A Membrane solute permeability coefcient, B m3  m2  s1  4.44 108
0 Membrane structural parameter, S [m] 307
0.06
The variations of the viscosity, osmotic pressure, diffusion coefcient
and density are same to the current work as shown in Eqs. (10)(13). In
the case of RO, the mean inlet velocity is considered to be 0.002 ms1
and four different inlet mean velocities are studied, which are 0.001,
0.01, 0.1, and 1 ms1. More information about the BCs and parameters
can be found in [41,52], respectively.
In both cases of RO and FO, the most signicant objective of the sim-
ulations is the water ux along the membrane or the water permeation
rate through the membrane. Therefore, according to the results avail-
able in the published work, the comparison of the water ux is made
in RO and the accumulated water permeation rates of four Reynolds
numbers, which are the integration of the water ux prole along the
membrane, are made in FO. The results are shown in Fig. 3. Based on
the results in both cases, the CFD-based solver implemented in this
study is veried to be as accurate as previous publications. Because
the CFD modelling framework is same to all RO, FO and PRO using the
developed FOAM-like CFD solver, comparisons of the water ux from
RO and FO with the previous studies validated the implementation of
the CFD solver in OpenFOAM. Therefore, in this study, the CFD solver
including the modied SIMPLE loop, pre-processing of the grid and
mesh generation near the membrane surfaces, and the toolkits to
initialise the non-uniform elds and the complex boundary conditions
is used to simulate the ow and mass transfer in the PRO process.
4. CFD based modelling of PRO
Simulations are carried out in a simple cross-ow chamber shown in
Fig. 1, which is inspired by the chambers used in previous works as
shown in Fig. 2. In fact, due to complexity of the mass transfer and the
required extremely large number of the rened grids in a realistic mem-
brane module, such as the spiral wound membrane (SWM) module,
CFD simulation of the entire SWM module is prohibitive [55]. Therefore,
efforts have focused on study in detail of the ow eld and related prob-
lems at a reduced scale. In this study, the dimensions of the membrane
module are listed in Table 3. According to the similar geometry which is
spacer-free membrane ow channels to the previous CFD studies of RO
and FO [41,50,52], a mesh with the same density is employed. In the
non-uniform structured mesh, the rst grid points are located within

Fig. 3. Validation of the CFD model used in this study with published results in modelling RO (in (a)) and FO (in (b)).

Please cite this article as: Y. Wang, et al., Computational uid dynamics (CFD) based modelling of osmotic energy generation using pressure
retarded osmosis (PRO), Desalination (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.desal.2016.02.002
6 Y. Wang et al. / Desalination xxx (2016) xxxxxx

Fig. 4. Salt fraction along the y axis at the centre of the membrane from the wall in feed channel to the wall in the draw channel across the membrane.

5 m of the membrane, which is said to be capable to capture CP effects
[41,50,52]. Therefore, in this study, 150 graded cells of mesh are located
perpendicular to the membrane in both feed and draw channels with
the rst cell within 5 m next to the membrane and 300 cells are used
along the length of the chamber.
4.1. Effect of applied hydraulic pressure
From literatures, detrimental ECP affects the mass transfer across the
membrane and the ow at the draw side in a FO process. Especially for
low cross-ow velocities, signicant ECP is observed [41]. In contrast, in
PRO membrane process, a hydraulic pressure is applied on the draw
solution to extract the osmotic energy potential between the two solu-
tions. It is a key operational parameter to determine the performance of
the PRO process. There are a large number of the investigations based on
the semi-analytic model to identify the effect of the operating pressure
in different process scales of PRO, from the lab-scale PRO to the full-scale
PRO [56,57]. In this study, CFD model is used to evaluate the perfor-
mance of the PRO with respect to different hydraulic pressures.
In order to maintain the non-zero water ux from the feed to the
draw, theoretically, the hydraulic pressure applied on the draw solution
is set to be less than the initial osmotic pressure difference between
the draw and feed solution. Based on Eq. (10) to estimate the osmotic
pressure, the maximum applied pressure is approximately 28 bar.
Therefore, three hydraulic pressures, 7, 14 and 21 bar representing
low, medium and high operational pressure, are selected to study the
inuence of the different pressures on the performance of PRO.
The spatial variations of concentration perpendicular to the mem-
brane at the middle of the ow channel are shown in Fig. 4. The mean
inlet cross-ow velocities are 0.01 m/s for both draw and feed solutions.
According to the results, different ECP effects due to varied operational
pressures are obtained. The increased ECP effect is evident when a low
applied pressure is applied. It is a result of the high water ux across
the membrane when the pressure is low. Conversely, when the applied
pressure is high, ECP effect decreases. Based on the results shown in
Fig. 4, the salt fractions of the draw solution near the membrane surface
are approximately 0.02 and 0.03 in the PRO system with operational
pressure 7 bar and 21 bar, respectively. Compared to the salt fraction
of the bulk draw solution (0.035), the concentrations of the draw
solution at the membrane surface are reduced by 42.86% and 14.29%
respectively for the two cases. Furthermore, signicant ECP effects are
observed at the draw side compared to that at the feed side. As shown
in Fig. 4, signicant ECP effects can be found with all the three applied
pressures. This indicates that at the practical operation of PRO, such as
14 bar which is the approximated optimum pressure to achieve maxi-
mum power density at the inlet, ECP at the draw side cannot be negligi-
ble and should be considered. That is the reason why the semi-analytic
model expressed by Eq. (7) considers the ECP effect at the draw side.
Moreover, the ECP effects at the both channels along the x-axis are
shown in Fig. 5. According to the results, it is clear that solute concentra-
tions of both draw and feed solutions are signicantly changed along
the membrane channel. The dilution of the draw and the concentration
of the feed are strengthened when a low hydraulic pressure is applied.
In addition, although the insignicant magnitudes of the increased

Fig. 5. Salt fraction along the x axis. In (a), salt fraction of the draw solution along the membrane surface is shown. In (b), salt fraction of the feed solution along the membrane
surface is shown.

Please cite this article as: Y. Wang, et al., Computational uid dynamics (CFD) based modelling of osmotic energy generation using pressure
retarded osmosis (PRO), Desalination (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.desal.2016.02.002
 Y. Wang et al. / Desalination xxx (2016) xxxxxx 7

Fig. 6. Salt fractions perpendicular to the membrane at both sides with respect to different mean velocities of the draw solution are shown in (a). The detailed salt fraction proles at the
feed side are shown in (b).

feed solution concentration at the middle of the membrane with all
three applied pressures are shown in Fig. 4, the accumulated concen-
trated variations are actually signicant as the concentration is in-
creased twice when the applied pressure is 7 bar at the outlet of the
membrane channel. Moreover, according to the mass conservation,
the losses of the volume in feed ow channel result in rapidly increase
of the concentration of the solution. It is an exponentially increasing
concentration when the membrane area is increased.
4.2. Effects of cross-ow velocities
Generally, the mass transfer across the membrane is coupled with
the hydrodynamics in ow channels. On one hand, the cross-ow veloc-
ities affect the water ux and salt ux through the membrane. On the
other hand, the transport of the water and salt in the boundary layers
in both ow channels also result in the variations of the hydrodynamic
ow. In order to investigate the effects of cross-ow velocities, three
mean inlet cross-ow velocities, 0.001, 0.01 and 0.1 m/s, are selected
in either the draw or the feed ow channel. The applied pressure is
selected as 14 bar.
The spatial distribution of the salt fraction at the middle of the mem-
brane is selected to study the effect of the cross-ow velocities. The
results of the different cross-ow velocities are shown in Figs. 6 and 7.
In Fig. 6, the mean cross-ow velocity of the feed solution is 0.01 m/s,
and three mean cross-ow velocities of the draw solution, 0.001, 0.01
and 0.1 m/s, are selected. Conversely, constant mean cross-ow velocity
of 0.01 m/s is selected for the draw solution and the three mean cross-
ow velocities of the feed solution are studied in Fig. 7. Based on the
results shown in Fig. 6(a), it indicates the ECP effect near the membrane
at the draw side can be mitigated with applying a high cross-ow
velocity of the draw solution. The most decreased ECP effect is found
when the cross-ow velocity is 0.1 m/s in all three simulations. Howev-
er, according to the salt fraction proles perpendicular to the membrane
in the feed channel as shown in Fig. 6(b), it is found that the high cross-
ow velocity of the draw solution results in the increased CP at the feed
side near the membrane. As shown in Fig. 6(b), applying the highest
velocity of the draw solution, the most signicant CP effect in the feed
side is caused. In fact, a high velocity of the draw solution causing high
wall shear stress near the membrane surface decreases the ECP effect
at the draw side. As a result, the mass transfer across the membrane,
both the water and salt uxes, is enhanced and lead to the increased
CP effect at the feed side.
Moreover, according to the results shown in Fig. 7, the mean velocity
of the feed solution plays a less signicant role in the mass transfer
across the membrane in the simulated cases, compared to the cross-
ow velocity of the draw solution. With the increase on the feed mean
velocity, although the ECP effects in the feed channel are slightly
mitigated as show in Fig. 7(b), the salt transportations at the draw
side are almost same for all the three velocities as shown in Fig. 7(a).
It is a result of the limited changes on the local uxes of both water
and solute, with the different feed cross-ow mean velocities. In addi-
tion, the non-linear behaviour of the PRO process can be found. As
shown in Fig. 7(b), with the cross-ow velocity of the feed increases
from 0.001 to 0.01 m/s, the salt fractions are almost same. In contrast,
if the cross-ow velocity is further increased to 0.1 m/s, considerate
improvement of the CP is achieved that the salt fractions at the feed
side are reduced signicantly.
Furthermore, the overall performance of the PRO chamber is investi-
gated. Two cross-ow velocities, 0.01 and 0.1 m/s, are selected to study
the overall performance variations. The results of the average power

Fig. 7. Salt fractions perpendicular to the membrane at both sides with respect to different mean velocities of the feed solution is shown in (a). The detailed salt fraction proles at the feed
side are shown in (b).

Please cite this article as: Y. Wang, et al., Computational uid dynamics (CFD) based modelling of osmotic energy generation using pressure
retarded osmosis (PRO), Desalination (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.desal.2016.02.002
8 Y. Wang et al. / Desalination xxx (2016) xxxxxx

Fig. 8. Effects of the cross-ow velocities on the power density. Two velocities of the draw solution are considered. In (a), the mean velocity of the draw solution at the inlet is 0.01 m/s.
The velocity of the draw solution is 0.1 m/s is also considered and the results are shown in (b).

density with different cross-ow velocities are shown in Fig. 8 in which
eight simulations with different hydraulic pressures are studied. The
selected pressures are in the range from zero to the maximum, which
are 3, 7, 10, 14, 17, 21, 25 and 28 bar. In addition, the results of the
CFD based modelling are also compared with the results of the
semi-analytic model and the ideal PRO model in which neither CP
nor RSP effect is considered. In the semi-analytic model, the bound-
ary layer mass transfer coefcient, k, is calculated based on the
correlation [35],
D are selected. The results of the CFD model are compared with the semi-
k 0:46ReSc0:36
dh
where Re udh = is the Reynolds number, and Sc =D is the
Schmidt number.
Averaged power density of the membrane is used to present the
overall performance of the PRO, which is the product of the averaged
water ux of the entire membrane and the operating hydraulic pres-
sure. On the basis of the averaged performance of the PRO shown in
Fig. 8, it indicates the averaged semi-analytic model has a good accuracy
to predict the overall performance of the PRO at different applied pres-
sures. As shown in Fig. 8(a) and (b), the semi-analytic model successful-
ly approximated the power densities at different applied pressures and
the reductions due to the detrimental effects from the ideal PRO perfor-
mance. In accordance to the importance effect of the mean velocity of
the draw solution discussed earlier at a particular position along the
membrane channel, the increased mean cross-ow velocity of the
draw solution signicantly improves the overall performance of the
PRO. As shown in Fig. 8, with the increase on the mean cross-ow veloc-
ity of the draw solution from 0.01 m/s to 0.1 m/s, the averaged power
densities at all the studied pressures are considerably enhanced.
In contrast, compared to the improvement on the overall perfor-
mance by increasing the mean draw cross-ow velocity, the advanta-
geous effect on the averaged power densities by increasing the feed
velocity is less signicant. As shown in Fig. 8(a) and (b), with the
increase on the feed cross-ow velocity from 0.01 m/s to 0.1 m/s, the
averaged power densities are slightly increased. In addition, with the in-
crease on the applied pressure, a larger improvement on the averaged
power density is achieved in both studied cases. And comparing the
two studied cases with different draw mean cross-ow velocity, the
variations due to the changing feed cross-ow velocity are slightly
more signicant in the results shown in Fig. 8(a). Actually, the enhanced
effect due to the feed velocity is a result of the reduced water ux across
the membrane. Because of the increase of the pressure and the decrease
of the draw velocity, the mass transfer across the membrane is reduced.
Consequently the feed ow variations become relatively important to
improve the mass transfer. And the improved mass transfer at the
boundary layer near the membrane at the feed side results in the better
overall performance of the process, as shown in Fig. 8(a) compared to
that in Fig. 8(b).
4.3. Effects of membrane properties
Membrane properties, including permeability, selectivity and struc-
tures, also play an important role on the mass transfer to determine the
ux of water and solute through the membrane. In this section, three
membranes with different permeability and selectivity from literatures
14
analytic model and the overall effects on the averaged power densities
are evaluated. These membranes are listed in Table 4. Membrane
performance is increasingly enhanced from M1 to M3. Membrane M3
is a virtual membrane has the preferred performance with very high
permeability-selectivity and very low structural parameter.
The results of the averaged power densities of the PRO chamber with
the selected three membranes are shown in Fig. 9. The mean cross-ow
velocity is 0.01 m/s for both the draw solution and the feed solution.
Seven applied hydraulic pressures of 3, 7, 10, 14, 17, 21 and 25 bar are
selected in the CFD modelling. According to the results, the semi-
analytic model is capable to predict the trend of the enhanced overall
performance by using a higher performance membrane. From results
using membrane from M1 to M3 as shown in Fig. 9(a) to (c), larger
averaged power densities are obtained in accordance to the results of
the CFD modelling. However, the deviations between the two models
become larger as well. In the chamber using membrane M1, the results
based on the semi-analytic model successfully track the results based on
the CFD modelling, according to the small differences of the results
between the two models. In contrast, as shown in Fig. 9(b) and (c),
with the increase on the membrane performance, several of the
averaged power densities simulated by the semi-analytic model are
deviated from those of the CFD modelling. The deviations become larger
when the improvement of the membrane is enhanced. As shown in
Fig. 9(c), obvious differences of averaged power densities between the
two models are found.
In fact, due to the enhanced membrane permeability and selectivity,
water ux is increased with the little sacrice on the salt leakage. As a
result, the overall mass transfer across the membrane is signicantly
Table 4
Selected membrane properties.
NO Publications A [m3/(m2Pas)] B [m3/(m2s)] S [m]
12
M1 Chen et al. [58] 6.944 10 2.5 107 405
M2 Achilli et al. [59] 1.419 1011 2.417 108 310
M3 Prante et al. [23] 1.870 1010 1.11 108 6.87

Please cite this article as: Y. Wang, et al., Computational uid dynamics (CFD) based modelling of osmotic energy generation using pressure
retarded osmosis (PRO), Desalination (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.desal.2016.02.002
 Y. Wang et al. / Desalination xxx (2016) xxxxxx
Fig. 9. Averaged power densities of the PRO chamber with different membranes. Three membranes, M1, M2 and M3, are studied and the results are shown in (a), (b) and (c) respectively.
improved. But the enhanced water ux inuences the convection and
diffusion in the boundary layers at both sides near the membrane. Be-
cause the ow and mass transfer in y-axis is resolved in CFD modelling,
the changes of the hydrodynamics and transportation in the boundary
layer can be simulated. However, the mass transfer coefcient in bound-
ary layer near the membrane at the draw side as expressed by Eq. (14) is
mainly dependent on the cross-ow velocity of the draw solution. In the
semi-analytic modelling, the cross-ow velocities are assumed to be
constant, so the boundary layer thickness and the boundary layer
mass transfer coefcient are not changed in accordance to the different
uxes across the membrane. Therefore, the changes on the overall per-
formance of the PRO due to the varied membrane permeabilityselec-
tivity are not accurately reected by the semi-analytic model.
In this study, the thickness of the boundary layer in the mass transfer
is dened as the distance across a boundary layer from the membrane
surface to a point where the salt fraction has essentially reached 99%
of the salt fraction of the bulk ow. The thickness of the boundary
layer is dependent on the resulting variations of the uxes due to the
membrane properties. The thicknesses of the boundary layer at the
draw side obtained by CFD modelling are shown in Fig. 10. According
to the results, the thicknesses of the boundary layer at the draw side
are changed with the different membranes. A thicker boundary layer
is found when the membrane M3 is used in the simulation. A thicker
boundary layer can result in the enhanced ECP effect at the draw side.
Consequently, the net driving force across the membrane is changed,
causing the reduction of the water ux. In addition, the varied water
ux also affects the ICP and RSP implicitly. Therefore, the change of
the thickness and the boundary layer mass transfer coefcient will
cause the variations of the overall performance of the PRO. It can be
concluded that the semi-analytic model does not reect these variations
and under-estimate the inuence of the permeation across the
membrane on the detrimental effects in the mass transfer.
Fig. 10. Thickness of the boundary layer near to the membrane at the draw side.
Please cite this article as: Y. Wang, et al., Computational uid dynamics (CFD) based modelling of osmotic energy generation using pressure
retarded osmosis (PRO), Desalination (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.desal.2016.02.002
9
5. Conclusions
A numerical study on the coupled effect of the hydrodynamics and the
mass transfer in the PRO process is carried out in the present work. First,
the CFD model is developed and implemented based on the framework of
OpenFOAM. After the validation of the numerical algorithm of the numer-
ical solver, different operating parameters are investigated and the perfor-
mance of the two models, CFD model and semi-analytic model, are
compared. On the basis of the results, several conclusions can be drawn:
1) In a PRO process, a low applied pressure results in a signicant ECP ef-
fect at the draw side; 2) The cross-ow velocity of the draw solution plays
a more signicant role to inuence the mass transfer across the mem-
brane and the overall performance of the PRO process than that of the
feed solution according to the numerical results. High cross-ow velocity
of the draw solution causes the signicant increase of the averaged power
density of the membrane; 3) Although the effect of the feed cross-ow
velocity is less signicant compared to that of the draw solution, it helps
increasing the average power density of the PRO at the operations of
the low draw cross-ow velocity and the high applied pressures; 4) The
semi-analytic model is capable to predict the performance of the PRO
with a relatively lower permeable membrane but difcult to reect the
varied performance of the PRO due to the changed membrane properties.
In contrast, the coupling effect of the changed mass transfer across the
membrane and the hydrodynamics in the ow channel can be resolved
by the CFD modelling.
Nomenclature
A membrane water permeability [L  m2  h1  Pa1 ]
B membrane solute permeability [L  m2  h1 ]
c concentration of solution [kg  kg1 ]
COS Van't Hoff law coefcient [Pa  kg  g1 ]
D diffusion coefcient [m2  s1 ]
dh height of ow channel [m]
k mass transfer coefcient [m  s1 ]
JW water permeation ow rate [L  m2  h1 ]
JS reverse solute permeation ow rate [L  m2  h1 ]
P pressure [Pa]
Re Reynolds number
S membrane structure parameter [m]
SC Schmidt number
u, v velocity [m  s1 ]
x, y coordinates
osmotic pressure [Pa]
density of solution [kg  m3 ]
viscosity of uid [Pas]
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