PARAMETER ESTIMATION AND MODELING OF SPIRAL-WOUND

In the recent years, several factors have led to the development of membrane separation technology. The most important ones are the necessity of fresh water production for drinking, domestic, agricultural, landscape or industrial uses, the requirement of higher performance level methods for waste water reclamation and reuse applications, as well as lower regulatory maximum allowed levels of contaminants. Membrane processes are often chosen in water treatment technology since these applications achieve high removals of constituents such as dissolved solids, organic carbon, inorganic ions, and regulated and unregulated organic compounds. Reverse osmosis (RO) and nanofiltration (NF) membrane processes are used around the world for potable and ultra pure water production, chemical process separations, as well as desalination of seawater (salinity around 35 g/l) and brackish water (less salty than the seawater).Reverse osmosis (RO) processes have been widely used for separation and concentration of solutes in many fields, such as chemical and biomedical industry, food and beverage processing, as well as water and wastewater treatment. With the shrinkage of water sources and the more stringent standards for drinking water quality, the applications of RO membrane in water reclamation and seawater desalination will continue to grow in the near future. Thus, a better model for describing RO process performance is highly desirable for designing and optimizing the system to further improve its cost-effectiveness. Moreover, lately there has been a growing interest in the integration of such membrane technologies for municipal and industrial water treatment, since they have been recommended as suitable for cost effective desalination and removal of a wide range of low molecular weight trace organic constituents. Organic compounds of particular interest include endocrine disruptors, human and animal antibiotics, disinfection by-products, insecticides and herbicides, and various pharmaceutical drugs. Many of these compounds have been detected in natural ecosystems at bioactive concentrations.