School of Chemical Engineering, The University of Adelaide, SA 5005, Australia.
School of Chemical Engineering, The University of Adelaide, SA 5005, Australia.
Water Res. 2015 Mar 1;70:385-93. doi: 10.1016/j.watres.2014.12.023. Epub 2014 Dec 23.
Stimuli-responsive hydrogels were recently proposed for energy-saving forward osmosis (FO) process. However, their low water flux and dewatering ability for reuse make them less attractive for industrial desalination process. In this work, the co-polymer microgels of N-isopropylacrylamide and acrylic acid with different mixing ratios were synthesized using surfactant-free emulsion polymerization to produce submicron-size hydrogels with high surface area and fast swelling-deswelling response. The microgels were employed as draw agents in a laboratory scale FO desalination system. The microgel-based FO process performed a high water flux up to 23.8 LMH and high water recovery ability of 72.4%. In addition, we explored a new conductivity measurement method to online analyze water flux of the FO system. This on-line conductivity analysis approach appeared to be an accurate and efficient method for evaluating microgel-based FO desalination performance. Our experimental data revealed that the stimuli-responsive microgel was an efficient draw agent for FO desalination.
刺激响应水凝胶最近被提出用于节能正向渗透（FO）过程。然而，它们的低水通量和脱水能力限制了它们在工业脱盐过程中的应用。在这项工作中，我们使用无表面活性剂乳液聚合合成了 N-异丙基丙烯酰胺和丙烯酸的共聚物微凝胶，以产生具有高表面积和快速溶胀-收缩响应的亚微米级水凝胶。微凝胶被用作实验室规模 FO 脱盐系统中的提取剂。基于微凝胶的 FO 过程表现出高达 23.8 LMH 的高水通量和 72.4%的高水回收率。此外，我们探索了一种新的电导率测量方法来在线分析 FO 系统的水通量。这种在线电导率分析方法似乎是评估基于微凝胶的 FO 脱盐性能的一种准确且高效的方法。我们的实验数据表明，刺激响应微凝胶是一种高效的 FO 脱盐提取剂。
