Comparison of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and Experimental Data for Fouling Mitigation with Sinusoidal Reverse Osmosis Spacer

This paper describes work done on a series of novel sinusoidal spacers that can form unobstructed sinusoidal membrane channels and the performance of various novel sinusoidal spacers and the conventional mesh spacer on mitigating foulant deposition onto membrane surface. Data was evaluated both experimentally on a bench-scale RO system and numerically with a three dimensional computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model. The results of the fouling experiments with humic acid and calcium ions showed that sinusoidal spacers were able to mitigate the membrane fouling and increasing the tortuosity of the sinusoidal wave pattern enhanced the efficiency of fouling mitigation.