Experimental Optimization of Operating Condition to Decline the Concentration Polarization on the Surface of Reverse Osmosis Membrane

This research addressed the experimental optimization of the operating conditions to decrement the concentration polarization on the reverse osmosis (RO) membrane. Regarding the number and diversity of the effective parameters (salt concentration, pressure, flow rate, and pH) of desalination process, Taguchi design of experiment (DoE) was employed to decrease the number of texts and costs. The contribution of various parameters and optimal conditions to achieve the highest desalination were determined using Taguchi DoE and ANOVA as implemented in Minitab 16 software. The RO desalination increased in various conditions by prolonging the time for tests 5, 4, and 6. The best desalination performance of the polyamide composite membrane (97.24%) was achieved for salt concentration, pressure, flow rate , and pH of 1500 ppm, 10 bar, 0.5 L/min, and 7, respectively. The highest water flux through the polyamide composite membrane during the RO process was 41.04 L/m2hr which was observed in test 6. Such an enhancement in the water flux can be assigned to the decrease in the concentration polarization on the polyamide composite membrane.