Mathematical and experimental modeling of reverse osmosis (RO) process

This paper provides a mathematical simulation model for the reverse osmosis (RO) process with series elements. A mathematical simulation model was developed based on the mass, material and energy balances considering the concentration polarization. The simulation model is open-source and easy to couple with other computational tools like optimization algorithms and SCADA1 applications. An RO laboratory pilot was also set up in the Hydraulic Lab of Shahid Chamran University of Ahvaz to validate the simulation results. Comparing the results of the simulation model with the experiments and ROSA commercial software, the proposed simulation model functions well and is reliable. The comparisons indicate that the simulation results are over 96% close to ROSA and over 80% close to experimental results.