Theoretical and experimental work on forward osmosis for the treatment of landfill leachate wastewater
- Publication Type:
- Thesis
- Issue Date:
- 2023
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Forward osmosis (FO) membrane-based desalination has attracted tremendous attention due to its numerous advantages over pressure-driven membrane processes, particularly for treating complex wastewater. However, the process is driven by osmosis or concentration differences between the feed, and the draw solutions are hindered by concentration polarization and fouling. This research investigated the theoretical and experimental work on the forward osmosis process using landfill leachate wastewater. Landfill leachate wastewater can lead to carcinogenic effects, acute toxicity, and genotoxicity among humans if leached into the groundwater or soil. Furthermore, emerging pollutants in the landfill site can contaminate soil, turning it into contaminated land. There are strict regulations regarding the maximum limits of contaminants that must be treated before being disposed of into the environment. In countries such as Australia, the problem is further exacerbated, as long drought years and occasional strong wet spells cause faster dispersion of leachate in the surrounding areas, causing surface and underground contamination. As weather patterns become more unpredictable due to the complex climate change matrix, these leaks may become more severe and frequent. The landfill leachate collected from two sites, Whyte Gully, located in Wollongong, and Hurstville Golf course, located in Hurstville, revealed hazardous contaminants, including radioactive thorium. Successfully, FO was able to reject all the contaminants in the baseline tests. However, it was noticed that traditional chemical cleaning protocols lead to low rejection of some hazardous contaminants (Nickel, Barium, magnesium, to name a few). Therefore, we proposed a novel cleaning protocol for FO membranes fouled by landfill leachate wastewater, which has no impact on membrane rejection, saves energy with in-situ static cleaning, is low cost compared to traditional chemical protocols, can be reused over and over without discharging to the environment and has high efficiency than traditional cleaning protocols such as acid cleaning, base cleaning and cleaning with other chemical agents. In the theoretical part of this thesis, we proposed a new model for measuring concentration polarisation in forward osmosis via empirical and machine learning approaches.
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