CHE715/CE8331, Membrane Technology 1

Assignment #2
Due Date: April 1, 4 PM

Problem 1. (25 points) Reverse Osmosis (RO) without concentration polarization

You use a stirred batch module to remove sodium chloride from water. With a high stirred speed, you
eliminate the effect of concentration polarization during the RO filtration. The initial weight fraction of
0.0075 sodium chloride is fed to the batch and the rejection coefficient is 0.98. For a dilute system,
osmosis pressure can be estimated by = where = 15.45 . The operation runs at room
temperature, 20oC. Additionally, before this purification of the water, you ran pure water through the
membrane with a pressure drop of 15 atm and the measured water flux was 510 g/(m2 ).

Estimate the retentate pressure with Pp=0.15 atm to have the solvent flux of 420 g/(m2 ).

Problem 2. (25 points) Reverse Osmosis with Concentration polarization

You are setting up a RO stirred batch module to concentrate a dilute sucrose mixture. Initially, you
ran the pure water through a membrane used for the RO filtration and measured the flux and
pressure drop 100 atm and 1.2x10-3 g/cm2s) respectively. You plan to operate the filtration at the
following conditions: M = 3.0, cut = 0.65 a feed mixture of 0.025 wt, a mass rate of 4.5 kg/s, and a
pressure drop of 80 atm . The operation will run at room temperature, 20oC.

Determine the surface area of the membrane required.

Problem 3) (50 points) (Problem 14.19 in the reference by Seader)