• Membrane Journal
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.273-280
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• 2016

Pressure assisted forward osmosis (PAFO) is recently introduced because of its improved process efficiency to overcome drawbacks of forward osmosis (FO) such as low water flux and reverse solute diffusion. However, it is known that membrane fouling becomes deteriorated by additional hydraulic pressure applied in PAFO compared to FO. This study was performed to investigate possibility of intermittent pressure-assisted forward osmosis (I-PAFO) operation for fouling mitigation using colloidal silica particles as model foulants. FO, PAFO were operated as well to compare with. Two different solution pH conditions (pH 3, 10) were applied to see the effect of electrostatic interactions between the membrane and silica particles on fouling tendency. In the results, higher water flux was observed during pressurization and pressure relaxation periods in I-PAFO than water flux of PAFO, and FO on both pH conditions. Water flux decreased less in I-PAFO than PAFO after fouling. It resulted in higher water flux recovery in I-PAFO than PAFO after physical cleaning.