Desalination
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/desal
Department of Chemical and Process Engineering, Faculty of Engineering and Built Environment, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 43600 UKM Bangi, Selangor DE, Malaysia
Research Centre for Sustainable Process Technology (CESPRO), Faculty of Engineering and Built Environment, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 43600 UKM Bangi, Selangor DE, Malaysia
Centre for Water Advanced Technologies and Environmental Research (CWATER), College of Engineering, Swansea University, Swansea SA2 8PP, UK
d
School of Chemical Engineering, Engineering Campus, Universiti Sains Malaysia Seri Ampangan, 14300 NibongTebal, Penang, Malaysia
b
c
H I G H L I G H T S
Today, conventional water treatment process encounters more and tougher challenges.
Membranes have been widely deemed as the alternative process in water industry.
Integrated/hybrid processes could help in reducing the problems of water scarcity.
Marked improvements and benets could be obtained by this membrane process.
Integrated/hybrid processes could lead to a breakthrough in solving water scarcity.
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Article history:
Received 23 September 2013
Received in revised form 6 March 2014
Accepted 8 March 2014
Available online xxxx
Keywords:
Integrated/hybrid membrane process
Water treatment
Desalination
Membrane pretreatment
a b s t r a c t
Conventional processes involved in water treatment, either in water treatment plants or reverse osmosis desalination plants, have encountered several obstacles that have severely affected their performances and efciencies.
Pollution of natural water resources, increasing demand and overuse of clean water have all put critical stress on
currently available conventional water treatment/desalination plants. Due to these problems, integrated/hybrid
membrane processes have attracted much interest. An integrated/hybrid membrane system is a process which
combines a membrane ltration unit (microltration/ultraltration/nanoltration) with other processes such
as coagulation, adsorption and ion exchange. Alternatively, it can be a combination of different membranes in
the same system with a conventional process. The purpose of this paper is to review the applicability of integrated/hybrid membrane systems in water treatment plants and reverse osmosis desalination plants. The literature
shows that many benets and marked improvements could be achieved with integrated/hybrid membrane processes, such as enhanced quality of the water produced, energy savings, environmental friendliness, and reductions in the capital and operating costs of the plants. The implications of the integrated membrane system prove
that it has huge potential to be widely applied and can lead to a breakthrough in solving the problem of water
scarcity.
2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
Water is one of the vital commodities that sustains and nurtures our
life on earth and can be easily obtained from our surrounding. Fresh
water is consumed daily for many purposes. The three largest consuming sectors worldwide are agriculture (70%), industry (19%) and domestic use (11%) [1]. Several factors such as overuse/misuse of water,
Corresponding author at: Department of Chemical and Process Engineering, Faculty of
Engineering and Built Environment, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 43600 UKM Bangi,
Selangor DE, Malaysia. Tel.: +60 3 8921 6410; fax: +60 3 8921 6148.
E-mail address: wahabm@eng.ukm.my (A.W. Mohammad).
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.desal.2014.03.008
0011-9164/ 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Please cite this article as: W.L. Ang, et al., A review on the applicability of integrated/hybrid membrane processes in water treatment and
desalination plants, Desalination (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.desal.2014.03.008
Please cite this article as: W.L. Ang, et al., A review on the applicability of integrated/hybrid membrane processes in water treatment and
desalination plants, Desalination (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.desal.2014.03.008
Fig. 1. Fouled membrane element. (A) Frontal view of spiral wound RO element. (B) Macroscopic view of fouling layer (C and D). High magnication electron micrographs of fouling layer
surface.
Source: Schneider et al. [32].
Please cite this article as: W.L. Ang, et al., A review on the applicability of integrated/hybrid membrane processes in water treatment and
desalination plants, Desalination (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.desal.2014.03.008
Fig. 2. Silica fouling on RO membranes operated with (A) papermill efuent and (B) groundwater.
Source: Antony et al. [33].
Please cite this article as: W.L. Ang, et al., A review on the applicability of integrated/hybrid membrane processes in water treatment and
desalination plants, Desalination (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.desal.2014.03.008
meet the standards in WHO Guidelines for Drinking Water Quality 2008
[41]. Currently, membrane ltration has been proven to be a good alternative to conventional water treatment plants.
Membrane ltration offers several advantages such as little or no requirement for chemicals, a higher quality of water produced, reduced
sludge production and a smaller plant footprint [10]. In addition,
another important benet of membrane ltration is that it can reject
various pollutants simultaneously, which cannot be achieved using
many conventional processes. For example, the use of a nanoltration
membrane can reject and reduce hardness, color and pesticides in the
feed water [19,42]. This is economically feasible since many different
conventional treatment processes can be replaced by a single membrane treatment.
Basically, membrane water treatment can be divided into two categories: (i) standalone membrane processes and (ii) integrated/hybrid
membrane processes. A standalone membrane process is treating
water utilizing only membranes, such as microltration (MF), ultraltration (UF) and nanoltration (NF) membranes, while with an
integrated/hybrid process, a pretreatment will be applied prior to the
membrane ltration unit. This pretreatment process may consist of conventional methods (such as coagulation, occulation, sedimentation) or
a membrane pretreatment method [43]. Nowadays, a number of
integrated/hybrid membrane systems for water treatment have been
established to produce drinking water. The reason behind this development trend is because membrane fouling is a major obstacle for membrane ltration processes, especially when the raw water contains
high concentrations of natural organic matter (NOM) [44]. When
there is a high load of organic content in the feed water, neither of the
membranes can guarantee high water quality and at the same time
the risk of fouling will increase signicantly [45]. Hence, to secure
good water quality and the performance of the membrane, it has to be
combined with other processes such as coagulation, adsorption or
even coupled with another membrane. With the presence of an integrated/hybrid system, a pretreatment prior to the membrane ltration
unit can provide another barrier to the contaminants in the raw water
and thus reduce the chance of membrane fouling. Detailed information
about water treatment plants with integrated/hybrid membrane
systems will be elaborated in the following section.
2.1. Microltration/ultraltration membranes
Membrane ltration with microltration (MF) and ultraltration
(UF) membranes has become widely used in drinking water treatment
plants. Several large scale UF plants for drinking water production are
already being installed worldwide. However, several major problems
have impeded the widespread use of UF/MF for drinking water production. Among these problems are fouling of UF/MF and the poor rejection
efciency of contaminants. A MF/UF alone was found to have poor removal of dissolved organic solutes (DOM), disinfection by-products
(DBP) and precursors, biopolymers such as algal organic matter
(AOM) and efuent organic matter (EfOM) [4648]. It is undeniable
that a single UF/MF membrane unit can produce water of sufcient
quality for drinking provided the water resources are of a good grade
(free from contamination by wastes from human activities), i.e. where
water resources have been properly conserved. But where the impurities mentioned above are present in the raw water, a standalone membrane process may not be so feasible for producing drinking water of the
quality recommended by WHO. This gives rise to the concept of integrated/hybrid membrane processes in treating water with the impurities mentioned above as well as water contaminated with wastes that
standalone membrane and conventional processes nd hard to remove.
Many studies have been carried out combining different conventional
treatment methods for use as a pretreatment for a membrane ltration
process, and the outcomes showed that overall performance had been
increased not only in terms of the production ux and membrane
lifespan (reduction in membrane fouling) but also in terms of the
Please cite this article as: W.L. Ang, et al., A review on the applicability of integrated/hybrid membrane processes in water treatment and
desalination plants, Desalination (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.desal.2014.03.008
seem to be a solution to this problem. Several studies have been conducted to investigate the performance of MF membranes incorporating
a pretreatment such as a coagulation process. In a pilot plant built in
Korea, coagulation with an aluminum-based coagulant as a pretreatment enhanced the water quality and the permeate ux compared to
direct MF ltration without any pretreatment [60]. This pilot plant
was also tested for its ability to deal with sudden loading of extremely
turbid feed water. It was shown that the hybrid MF system could
improve DOM removal and was able to cope with shock solid loading.
Coagulation increased the retention of water soluble substances and
contaminants that were responsible for the colloidal fouling [61].
Thus, pretreatment prior to membrane ltration can protect the membrane from severe fouling caused by contaminants in the water. In addition, a hybrid coagulationMF/UF system was shown to enable the
removal of viruses, which could not have been done by MF or UF
alone [62]. This indicates that a MF membrane combined with an appropriate pretreatment process can be a potential technology for removing
viruses from drinking water. The choice of pretreatment is not only restricted to coagulation. Instead, several other types of pretreatments
have been studied and all led to good performance for the whole system. Super-powdered activated carbon and chitosan have been tested
in place of a conventional coagulant [63,64]. With activated carbon,
the caked fouling layer formed on the membrane surface was more permeable and thus a more stable ltration performance was achieved
[63]. Chitosan also appeared to improve the quality of the treated
water compared to the water treated by MF alone [64]. Some pretreatments may include a combination of several chemicals such as MIEX,
powdered activated carbon and coagulant [65]. Such combinations of
hybrid MF systems can reduce the levels of a wide range of dissolved organic carbons (DOC) and colloidal substances over a wide molecular
weight range in the water and thus successfully prevent short-term
fouling in MF.
2.2. Nanoltration membranes
From the previous section, it can be seen that MF/UF is mostly used
to treat groundwater and surface water, which mainly are of good
quality and only low levels of chemical contaminants. However, with
the reduction in the number of such clean water resources all over the
world, UF/MF might not be so capable in treating low grade waters
that are polluted with pesticides and high levels of low MW organic material [66] or the by-products of chlorination disinfection processes such
as trihalomethane (THM) precursors [45]. Furthermore, UF/MF is unable to soften the raw water, which has more dissolved ions in it.
Thus, some of this effort has been transferred to NF membranes,
which show the potential to retain pollutants and dissolved organic
matter and require a lower operating pressure than RO membranes.
However, NF water treatment plants still face the same problem that
has haunted membrane systems, which is membrane fouling caused
by the NOM and sub-micron particulates in the water [67]. In order to
mitigate and reduce membrane fouling, hybrid membrane systems
where conventional physical/chemical processes are combined with a
membrane ltration system have been widely adopted [68]. The following are a few examples of applications of hybrid NF system in drinking
water treatment processes.
Nanoltration (NF) membranes have found useful applications in
water softening since the 1990s. As noted in the previous section, traditional treatment methods are often unable to reduce the hardness of
groundwater to a sufciently low level but this can be achieved with a
NF membrane. According to projects carried out by the Intermunicipal
Water Company of Veurne Ambacht, NF can remove hardness from
groundwater quite effectively, with retentions higher than 90% for multivalent ions (hardness is mostly due to multivalent ions such as calcium
and magnesium) and around 6070% for monovalent ions [20]. An example of a successful application of NF in a water treatment plant is
Mery-sur-Oise in France [18]. This NF water treatment plant has been
in operation for several years treating the surface water from the river
Oise. The river water contains such high concentrations of organic matter and pesticides that the traditional water treatment method faced difculties reducing the contaminants to an acceptable level. With the
application of a NF membrane and pretreatment of the feed water
prior to membrane ltration by coagulation, occulation, settling and
sand ltration, product water quality has been improved with improved
removal efciency of organic matter and pesticides from the raw water.
Another study on NF of groundwater with high levels of hardness and
natural organic matter (NOM) content was carried out in a German
water treatment plant [69]. The treatment process consisted of a pretreatment (deferrization, demanganization and rapid sand ltration)
system before the water was fed to a NF membrane. The rejection of
NOM was nearly complete (N95%) and the rejection of calcium and
magnesium was very high as well (N74% and N 86%, respectively). The
combination of a conventional with a NF process reduced the fouling
problem and required less use of chemicals. From the above cases, it
can be seen that the performance of hybrid conventional-NF membrane
processes is satisfactory. This is further proven by a study carried out
with a coagulation-NF hybrid to remove humic acid (NOM), bromide
and bromate (carcinogenic substances) [70]. From the study, it was
found that those contaminants could not be removed effectively by coagulation or NF alone. But with the hybrid coagulation-NF process the
contaminants could be removed effectively while the permeate ux
was improved at the same time.
In a nutshell, pretreatment prior to membrane ltration can increase
the permeate quality and reduce membrane fouling. However, caution
should be taken when designing and choosing a combination hybrid
membrane process for a plant because the extent of treatment required
depends on the quality of the feed water. A good grade of feed water requires very little treatment but low grade feed water requires a more
extensive treatment process. In addition, the balance between capital/
operating cost and quality of water produced should be taken into consideration since a protless plant would not be desired even though it
could produce a superior quality of potable water.
3. Integrated/hybrid membranes as a pretreatment in RO
desalination plants
As previously described, conventional pretreatment processes have
been widely applied to SWRO desalination plants despite their vulnerability to variations in the quality of the feed water. However, with the
emergence and advancement of membrane technology there is a new
trend in trying to utilize membranes as pretreatments for SWRO plants.
Installations and pilot scale testing of membrane pretreatments have reportedly increased. The outcomes from those trials are encouraging and
promising. Fig. 4 shows a comparison between conventional and membrane pretreatment prior to RO desalination [71]. Though membrane
based pretreatment (MF/UF/NF) for a reverse osmosis desalination
plant with seawater/brackish water as feed is an attractive alternative
to conventional pretreatment methods, it is still a relatively new application and not many desalination plants worldwide are using it. The experiences from a few pilot and real plants that utilized membrane-based
pretreatments will be described below. It can be seen that most of the
membrane pretreatments were combined with other treatments such
as coagulation to boost their overall performance. The use of integrated/hybrid membrane systems not only is popular in water treatment
plants, but also is being utilized in RO desalination plants. The reason
behind this trend is mostly due to the low quality of sea and brackish
water, which require more intensive pretreatment before being fed to
a RO system.
3.1. Microltration/ultraltration membranes
A research project on the applicability of MF as a pretreatment for a
SWRO system had been carried out as early as 1997 [72]. The study
Please cite this article as: W.L. Ang, et al., A review on the applicability of integrated/hybrid membrane processes in water treatment and
desalination plants, Desalination (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.desal.2014.03.008
Please cite this article as: W.L. Ang, et al., A review on the applicability of integrated/hybrid membrane processes in water treatment and
desalination plants, Desalination (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.desal.2014.03.008
of operation and ltrate quality. It was reported that with the addition
of polyferric sulfate coagulant, the ux of the UF ltrate could be increased from 65 lmh to 80 lmh. This showed that with a proper combination of pretreatments, the performance of the whole system can be
enhanced.
Not only coagulation was combined with UF membrane as a pretreatment process, but also the performances of ion exchangeUF and
limeUF were tested out as well. According to the results obtained
from the Corso desalination plant, coupled treatment of ion exchange
UF with amberlite IR 120 as the resin gave the best result with 98%
turbidity removal, reduced from 8.4 NTU to 0.13 NTU [88]. Pilot scale
hybrid electrocoagulationUF and coagulationUF systems to pretreat
seawater were also carried out to determine which combination is better [89,90]. It was shown that in-line electrocoagulation resulted in
lower resistance to ltration and the ux recovery was improved after
UF membrane cleaning compared to an equivalent dose of ferric chloride. However, further study is required to optimize the practicality
and sustainability of this system.
Hybrid UF membrane systems not only are capable of reducing the
turbidity of the raw water, but also can be designed to remove other
contaminants such as silica. Silica removal by an in-line coagulation
UF system was tested using brackish water containing 30 mg/L of
SiO2. Silica was successfully removed with an optimum removal rate
of 65% with an alum (coagulant) dosage of 30 mg/L as Al2O3 [91].
There have been several other pilot studies of UF as a pretreatment in
a SWRO desalination plant, at the Kalealo desalination pilot plant, Ewe
Beach, Hawai and NFESC, Port Hueneme, CA [92], the Aquaculture
farm of Ifremer (French Institute of Marine Research) at Palavas-lesots, France [93] and the SWRO desalination plant in Qingdao Jiaozhou
Bay, China [94]. All those tests conrmed the benets of hybrid UF
systems as pretreatments for SWRO plants.
Outcomes from these trials showed that a variety of hybrid membrane systems can be developed, as long as it is suitable to pretreat
the feed water, and will produce the required ltrate water quality. It
should be noted that the hybrid system must be designed in such a
way that the additional pretreatment process will not be redundant. A
study on the removal of organic microconstituents by a RO membrane
was carried out with three types of pretreatment processes, a UF membrane, magnetic ion exchange (MIEX)UF, and MIEXcoagulationUF
[95]. From the results it was shown that the UF pretreatment effectively
removed high MW NOM while the integration with other pretreatment
processes (MIEX and coagulation) did not provide additional reductions
in membrane fouling. Thus, the design of the hybrid system is very
important in order to achieve the best performance at the least cost.
Miscellaneous,
1.80%
Seawater supply,
4.50%
Pretreatment
system, 2.60%
High pressure
pumps, 1st pass,
80.60%
Product transfer
pumps, 6.70%
High pressure
pumps, 2nd
pass, 3.80%
Please cite this article as: W.L. Ang, et al., A review on the applicability of integrated/hybrid membrane processes in water treatment and
desalination plants, Desalination (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.desal.2014.03.008
Labor, 4%
Maintenance &
Consumables, 3%
parts, 7%
Membrane
replacement, 5%
ash distiller) and dual mediane sand media ltrationNF membraneSWROrejectMSF [100]. From the results obtained, NF reduced
ndings from the pilot plant studies and the tested operating conditions
from the demonstration plant will be utilized in the real NFSWRO plant
at Umm Lujj, Saudi Arabia [103]. A clearer schematic ow diagram of
these hybrid NF/RO/MSF systems can be referenced in Fig. 7 [104].
From the previous section, the performance of NF was best when the
raw seawater was rst passed through dual media and ne sand media
ltration units. However, the effect of direct ltration of seawater by NF
membranes is not well studied, especially the rejection of contaminants
and fouling mechanism. The effects of various pretreatments for particulates and to control inorganic fouling were studied on a SWRO [105]. It
was shown that the RO membrane ux was the highest with NF as a
pretreatment, for NF removed not only inorganic scale matter but also
colloidal particles. Besides combining NF with a conventional pretreatment process, an integrated membranemembrane system has also
been tested. An integrated UFNF membrane system was studied to
Please cite this article as: W.L. Ang, et al., A review on the applicability of integrated/hybrid membrane processes in water treatment and
desalination plants, Desalination (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.desal.2014.03.008
10
determine the performance of NF in seawater desalination pretreatment [106]. The UFNF system produced better efuent with 96.3%
TOC removal for long term operation, with the nal TOC concentration
in the range of 0.060.35 mg/L. This indicated that NF membranes
could produce very good quality ltrate. However, membrane fouling
was gradually observed, especially after chemical cleaning. This shows
that the system needs to be improved and studied more in depth to
identify the factors contributing to fouling.
NF is not only being tested in RO desalination plants, but also is being
tried in different integrated plants where RO desalination is combined
with different processes. For example, an integrated system where reverse osmosis and membrane distillation were combined with NF as
the feed pretreatment for the units was proposed and studied [107].
The introduction of NF in the pretreatment section raised the performance of the plant and at the same time kept the energy requirement
almost constant. The water production cost of the same integrated system was estimated to be 0.92 $/m3 with a recovery factor of 76.2% [108].
The potential of integrated membrane desalination with a membrane
crystallizer was also investigated [109]. By using NF as a pretreatment
for the seawater, the recovery of the RO unit can be up to 50%, and
with the introduction of a membrane crystallizer to treat the disposed
brine the overall recovery can be up to 100%. In addition, another integrated MFNFRO system with membrane distillation (MD)/membrane
crystallizer (MCr) units operating on the NF/RO retentate was considered. There were, accordingly, ve different congurations [110]. The
presence of MF removed particulates and microorganisms, which reduced the membrane-fouling propensity of the successive steps. NF
was found to be able to reduce the water hardness and thus the osmotic
pressure of the RO feed could be reduced, which allowed the recovery
rate to be increased. It was reported that the fth conguration, where
two MCr operated on the NF and RO retentate, achieved a water recovery up to 92.8%. This again demonstrated the potential of NF as a pretreatment option for desalination plants. An interesting study about
combining different membrane operations in desalination processes
was also carried out. RO desalination was combined with membrane
distillation with the hope of further increasing the recovery rate of the
whole desalination plant [111]. By introducing NF as a pretreatment
prior to the RO unit, it was possible to remove hardness, turbidity and
microorganisms, and reduce energy and chemical consumption as
well, leading to a 30% reduction in overall water costs. Seawater contains a variety of types of dissolved salts and attempts to exploit those
components economically have already been made [112]. This concept
was proposed to combine membrane ltration such as MF/UF/NF/RO,
a membrane crystallizer, adsorption and precipitator. It was also reported that NF should be used to separate sulfate ions from seawater, because if the scale components are not separated then scale deposition
on the membrane surface of the following unit can occur.
From the above examples it can be seen that NF is able to remove
contaminants and impurities in seawater and thus reduce the operating
pressure of the following RO unit. Operating at a lower pressure allows
power consumption to be reduced. This, combined with the lower fouling propensity of the membranes, further decreases the production cost
of the water.
4. Desalination of brackish/seawater by integrated/hybrid
nanoltration processes
RO desalination has long been recognized to be a huge energyconsuming unit in the overall desalination plant. This drives research towards the study of alternative processes to replace the RO membrane. A
combined process concept consisting of hybrid ion exchangeNF to desalinate brackish and seawater has been proposed [113]. In the rst
study attempt with simple salt solutions, monovalent chloride ion
was passed through an anion exchanger and exchanged with divalent
sulfate ion which led to a reduction in the osmotic pressure of the
feed water. In terms of divalent ion rejection, the NF membrane
required less than 50% the energy needed by the RO membrane in addition to providing higher permeability. However, this concept is still new
and thus requires extensive investigations with real seawater.
The quality of brackish water is usually better than that of seawater.
Hence, in some cases, a desalination plant will replace the RO membrane with a NF membrane since it requires lower operating pressure
and yet is still able to produce acceptable potable water. In Jordan, the
desalination of brackish water by NF was investigated [114]. The pilot
plant was a hybrid plant with a MF membrane as a pretreatment for
the brackish water prior to reaching the NF unit. It was observed that
the desalination process was efcient, judging from the removal of organic and inorganic contents from the feed water. A bench scale test
of NF for seawater desalination was also carried out by the Long Beach
Water Department utilizing a dual-stage NF process to replace the RO
desalination process [115]. The primary goal of this system was to reduce energy consumption while producing potable water at an acceptable recovery rate. From the bench scale testing, it was determined that
the NF system could desalinate the seawater to potable water. Hence,
this showed that NF has bright prospects in the desalination eld and
further investigations and fabrications of better NF should be carried
out to discover the possible application of NF to desalination. Fig. 8
shows the number of desalination plants using NF membrane technology for municipal drinking water treatment [116]. It can be seen that
most of the raw water was categorized as low salinity water (brackish
and river water) and the waters produced were used as drinking water.
The approach to pretreatment in SWRO desalination plants has undergone gradual changes and improvements, from the conventional
chemical/physical pretreatment process to membrane-based pretreatment and nally integrated/hybrid membrane systems. The effectiveness of the pretreatment system is usually accessed through its
performance, which includes the quality of the permeate, membrane
lifespan, membrane fouling tendency and cost. However, other considerations should be taken into account when evaluating the pretreatment
section, such as whether the fouled membrane can be backwashed/
chemically cleaned to regain its function, the efciency of the cleaned
membrane, the effect of chemical additives on the membrane and fouling propensity. Some integrated/hybrid systems might produce a better
Seawater, 1, 6%
Pure water, 2,
13%
Fig. 8. Total NF plants by type of raw water for municipal drinking water purposes.
Source: DesalData.com.
Please cite this article as: W.L. Ang, et al., A review on the applicability of integrated/hybrid membrane processes in water treatment and
desalination plants, Desalination (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.desal.2014.03.008
quality of permeate but the operating time and consumption cost will be
higher. Thus, thorough testing and studies have to be carried out to verify
the applicability of the integrated/hybrid pretreatment system in the real
plant.
Table 1
Economic comparison between UF and conventional pretreatment processes for SWRO.
Source: Adapted from Wolf et al. [31].
Costs
Ratio
1.01
1.01
1.41
0.92
0.98
0.79
0.93
1.04
0.84
0.59
9.00
11
to predict that the cost of integrated/hybrid membrane systems will become competitive with either conventional or standalone membrane processes. This assumption is also based on the advantages of integrated/
hybrid membrane systems, where a membrane section will have the
same benets as a standalone membrane unit but, with the integration
of other pretreatment processes upstream, membrane fouling problems
could be minimized. Thus, more cost analysis studies for integrated/
hybrid membrane systems need to be carried out in order to truly realize the potential of this process.
Another issue related to integrated/hybrid membrane systems is
their energy consumption. The use of a membrane might require
pumping water through the membrane, which results in the use of energy (depending on the quality of the raw water and type of membrane). However, the increment in energy consumption for that
particular section might impact on the following section's energy consumption. It was discussed in Section 3 that the use of integrated/hybrid
NF membrane systems as pretreatments for desalination plants was
able to reduce the energy consumption of the downstream RO unit
due to the partial removal of dissolved solids from the water. From
this report it can be seen that the extra energy spent on a NF membrane
can be covered by the reduced energy consumption in the other unit.
This again proves that a simple comparison between particular sections
is not an appropriate method to nalize which type of pretreatment is
better in terms of cost and energy consumption. Due to the scarcity of
information on cost and energy consumption for integrated/hybrid
membrane systems in the water industry, it is difcult to claim that integrated/hybrid membrane systems are cheaper than conventional/
standalone membrane processes. But from the few case studies shown
in the main text, it is not unreasonable to assume that an integrated/
hybrid membrane system is cost competitive and might consume less
energy in reality (though it depends on the quality of the raw water
and the design of the integration process). In addition, few studies
have been carried out to investigate possibilities for using renewable
energy as part of the power supply for desalination plants. This could
be an additional strength for membrane related processes, since the
successful implementation of a renewable energy supply will result in
reduced power consumption from a non-renewable source. In the
end, the energy cost and environmental pollution due to nonrenewable energy consumption could be reduced.
Waste discharge from integrated/hybrid membrane systems has not
been well studied. It has been reported that conventional water treatment processes consume large amounts of chemicals, especially in coagulation/occulation/sedimentation processes [119]. As a result, a
huge quantity of sludge will be produced that needs to be treated before
being discharged to the environment. The costs for sludge treatment
and disposal may represent a large percentage of the total operating
costs for water treatment plants if the raw water contains a large quantity of suspended particles. Membrane processes require less chemical
consumption but, for the most severe fouling processes, chemical
cleaning might be required to restore membrane performance [120].
The brine discharge may contain chemical residues from pretreatment
and cleaning processes which pose a threat to living organisms if it is released into the environment [121,122]. More details about the environmental impacts of desalination processes could be obtained by referring
to the reference cited. Chemical consumption and waste (brine) disposal for integrated/hybrid membrane systems have not been well studied
and no comparison between conventional/standalone membrane units
has been carried out yet. It is predicted that neither cost will be too high
because the use of a membrane results in reduced chemical consumption in the pretreatment section (as the removal of contaminants/
impurities does not depend solely on conventional processes) and the
pretreatment section would reduce the frequency of membrane
cleaning (the membrane fouling propensity decreases as the foulants
in the water are reduced by the pretreatment section) [123]. The footprint required for the membrane pretreatment is signicantly smaller
than conventional system with reported values between 30 and 60%
Please cite this article as: W.L. Ang, et al., A review on the applicability of integrated/hybrid membrane processes in water treatment and
desalination plants, Desalination (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.desal.2014.03.008
12
consumption, environmental friendliness due to reduced waste disposal, and reduced capital and operating costs due to the higher efciency
and productivity of the plants. In a nutshell, the design and types of
integrated/hybrid membrane systems in the water industry are very
exible, yet the potential of other possible combinations has not been
discovered completely and is not well understood. It is hoped that this
research trend will keep expanding to discover the best alternative hybrid membrane systems for the water industry in order to cope with the
problem of water scarcity.
7. Recommendations/discussion
Despite the encouraging outcomes from the use of hybrid/integrated
membrane systems in water treatment plants and RO desalination
plants, integrated/hybrid membrane systems still have some shortcomings/unknown areas that require further detailed study. Coagulation has
been shown to be one of the best candidates for fouling reduction. However, coagulant residuals from pretreatment processes using either
aluminum sulfate (alum) or ferric chloride may also have negative
effects on membrane performance [124]. Furthermore, excessive use
of PACl coagulant and PAC adsorbent dose showed the possibility of adverse effects on membrane performance as well as membrane permeability [50,125]. The effects of excessive use of additives have not been
well studied. Recently, carbon nanotube adsorption technology has
drawn special attention from researcher due to its capability to
remove bacterial pathogens, natural organic matter (NOM) and
cyanobacterial toxins from polluted water [27,126]. However, the production costs of carbon nanotubes are quite high, and it has potentially
Fig. 9. Development paths of integrated/hybrid membrane process in drinking water treatment plant.
Please cite this article as: W.L. Ang, et al., A review on the applicability of integrated/hybrid membrane processes in water treatment and
desalination plants, Desalination (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.desal.2014.03.008
13
Fig. 10. Development paths of integrated/hybrid membrane process as pretreatment for SWRO plant.
breakdown of larger molecular weight organic matter, favoring microorganism growth and thus accelerating biofouling [131]. UV irradiation
seems to be effective in inactivating microorganisms but its disadvantage is scale formation [132]. Thus, when designing an integrated/
hybrid system, care should be taken about the compatibility of a biocide
with the membrane unit. Further studies should also be conducted to
discover new preventive additives or pretreatment methods to head
off biofouling.
Water scarcity is not the only issue that will plague our daily lives.
The growing energy crisis seems to be another issue that will have a
major impact on us. Water and energy have a close relationship and
both are essential commodities for the wellbeing of humankind. These
two issues should not be treated in isolation. Instead, integrated solutions are necessary in order to tackle waterenergy nexus issues [133].
Desalination plants record high power consumption mainly due to
their pumping systems. In order to reduce stress on the energy sector,
research on the use of alternative energy sources should also be considered [134]. By utilizing green and renewable energy or reusing the
waste heat from the power plant, it is likely that electric power costs
can be reduced. Another possible way to reduce the energy consumption of the plant is by inventing new devices that can recover energy
from concentrated brine and have high energy conversion efciency
[97]. The nal aim will be to cut the cost of the water produced from
membrane desalination plants and at the same time reduce their energy
consumption or energy cost. Hence, this innovative integrated solution
should be investigated for a long term sustainable solution to reduce the
stress on water-energy nexus issues.
In addition, the discharged brine from desalination plants also needs
to be treated properly before being released to the environment. Improper brine disposal might have severe impacts upon our ecosystem.
Please cite this article as: W.L. Ang, et al., A review on the applicability of integrated/hybrid membrane processes in water treatment and
desalination plants, Desalination (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.desal.2014.03.008
14
It has been suggested that high salinity might threaten the growth of
ora and fauna. Some studies also found that the brine might be contaminated with chemical additives in the course of the desalination process that have the potential to impair biological communities [135].
Thus, in order to reduce the impact of brine disposal from desalination
plants, some recommendations have been made such as implementing
a zero-discharge concept in desalination plants and relying on mineral
extraction from the high salinity rejected brine [136]. These sustainable
practices and technologies will be more environmentally friendly with
minimal impact on the ecosystem.
Fig. 11 shows current and future efforts that can be undertaken to
further promote the acceptance of membrane processes in the drinking
water production industry. These can be divided into two major problem areas. The rst is related to membrane fouling and the second is
the cost due to energy consumption and the impact on the environment. To deal with the problem of membrane fouling, there are several
lines of research that can be pursued to reduce it, such as:
i) the use and discovery of new additives that not only reduce the
contaminants/impurities in the feed water, but also are harmless
to the membrane or at least would not cause negative effects on
the membranes.
ii) membrane fabrication and modication to discover new generations of membranes that have a higher capability to reject contaminants/impurities, high resistance to any possible fouling
processes, high resistivity towards chemical additives and can
be operated at lower pressure without sacricing the high ux
rate.
iii) the design of highly efcient integrated/hybrid systems that have
high production output, reduced energy consumption and fewer
problems with fouling.
Please cite this article as: W.L. Ang, et al., A review on the applicability of integrated/hybrid membrane processes in water treatment and
desalination plants, Desalination (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.desal.2014.03.008
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Please cite this article as: W.L. Ang, et al., A review on the applicability of integrated/hybrid membrane processes in water treatment and
desalination plants, Desalination (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.desal.2014.03.008