Search results for "osmosis"
showing 10 items of 77 documents
A critical assessment of desalination operations in Sicily
2005
In this paper a brief history of desalination plants in Sicily is presented together with an in-depth description of processes and operating data, relevant to the plants actually operating on the island. 5 multi stage flash (MSF) units and one reverse osmosis (RO) plant are operating in Gela (total nominal production of about 80,000 m 3 /d), thus providing drinking water for more than 300,000 people living in the southern coast of the island. A thermal vapour compression multiple effect distillation (TVC-MED) plant (36,000 m 3 /d) is operating in Trapani and a small mechanical vapour compression (MVC) unit (5000 m 3 /d) is located in Porto Empedocle. In the oldest MSF units in Gela, several…
Energy saving with MSF-RO series desalination plants
2003
Two major techniques are commercially used in different parts of the world: distillation and membrane processes. The dominant distillation process is multi-stage flash (MSF), and the main membrane process is reverse osmosis (RO). Although cost factors vary by site, the total cost of producing potable water from seawater with the RO process is today usually less than thermal desalting processes and the economic advantages of RO vs. evaporation process, such as MSF, are responsible for the rapid increase in use of seawater RO. In many countries both RO and MSF processes are operating. Reduction in product water cost could be achieved when a hybrid MSF-RO system is used, instead of a parallel …
Energy saving in two-stage reverse osmosis systems coupled with ultrafiltration processes
2005
In this paper the optimization of the main design parameters is performed for a double-stage seawater reverse osmosis (SWRO) system coupled with an ultrafiltration process; the minimal energy consumption is the goal of the optimization process. The energetic benefits for the membrane process are calculated, deriving from the use of a hybrid two-stage/two-pass lay-out with ultrafiltration pre-treatment, which is a typically a low energy consumption process. Also the benefits on membranes’ efficiency and duration are assessed by examining the very low Silt Density Index (SDI) of the water exiting the ultrafiltration section. The analysed system includes a SWRO membrane in the high pressure st…
A Review of the Water Desalination Technologies
2021
Desalination is commonly adopted nowadays to overcome the freshwater scarcity in some areas of the world if brackish water or salt water is available. Different kinds of technologies have been proposed in the last century. In this paper, the state of the mainstream solutions is reported, showing the current commercial technologies like reverse osmosis (RO), Multi-Stages Flash desalination (MSF) and Multi-Effect Distillation (MED), and the new frontiers of the research with the aim of exploiting renewable sources such as wind, solar and biomass energy. In these cases, seawater treatment plants are the same as traditional ones, with the only difference being that they use a renewable energy s…
Temperature-responsive cellulose-based hydrogels as draw agents in Forward Osmosis
2016
Forward Osmosis is a powerful tool to produce clean water at a low cost if appropriate draw agents and regeneration methods are employed (1). In this frame, stimuli-responsive hydrogels are interesting candidates due to their ability to uptake water and release it under physical stimuli, such as hydrostatic pressure and temperature variations. In particular, temperature-responsive hydrogels that are able to absorb large amount of water at room temperature and release it upon a slight temperature increase are very appealing candidates because they can be regenerated easily and with very low energy consumption (2). Chemical stability and biocompatibility are two further requirements that hydr…
Nanofiltration of secondary effluent for wastewater reuse in the textile industry
2008
Abstract Textile industries represent an important environmental problem due to their high water consumption. In many Spanish regions with water scarcity, this fact can be an argument to make wastewater reuse necessary. In this work, a biologically treated wastewater from a cotton thread factory was subjected to nanofiltration (NF) in two ways, direct NF treatment and NF after a pre-treatment stage by ultrafiltration (UF). Nowadays, the factory effluent is treated by an activated sludge process. This effluent has high values of COD (200mgO 2 L −1 ) and TDS (5000mg L −1 ) which makes its use in the textile processes impossible. In such situations, reverse osmosis (RO) has been typically used…
Inhibition of gluconeogenesis by extracellular ATP in isolated rat hepatocytes.
1991
The aim of this study was to determine the effect of externally added ATP on gluconeogenesis by isolated hepatocytes from starved rats. High concentrations of extracellular ATP inhibited gluconeogenesis from lactate and pyruvate but not from glycerol or fructose. This inhibition was associated with an increase in intracellular adenosine contents. ADP, AMP, or adenosine but not guanosine 5'triphosphate, inosine 5' triphosphate, or adenine also inhibited gluconeogenesis. alpha, beta-Methylene-ATP, a nonmetabolizable structural analogue of ATP, did not affect the rate of gluconeogenesis. Intracellular ATP levels were increased by externally added ATP or adenosine, but ATP-to-ADP ratios in the…
The yeast osmosensitive mutant fps1Δ transformed by the cauliflower BobTIP1;1 aquaporin withstand a hypo-osmotic shock
2005
AbstractOsmoregulation plays an important role in cellular responses to osmotic stress in plants and in yeast. Aquaporins contribute to osmotic adjustment by facilitating transport of water or solutes across membranes. The tonoplastic water channel BobTIP1;1 (original name BobTIP26-1) genes are upregulated during dessication stress in cauliflower meristematic tissue. To investigate the physiological importance of BobTIP1;1, we expressed it in a Saccharomyces cerevisiae osmosensitive mutant fps1Δ. We showed that the defect in the yeast glycerol plasma membrane transporter is complemented by a plant cDNA encoding the aquaporin BobTIP1;1 which is localized in the vacuolar membrane of the compl…
Low-cost materials for boron adsorption from water
2012
[EN] Knowing the affinity of boron aqueous species for cis-diol organic groups, five different hybrid materials have been prepared by anchoring glucose groups onto the surface of silica matrices with a different surface topology: UVM-7 bimodal mesoporous silica, UVM-11 unimodal non-templated mesoporous silica, commercial silica fume and two silica xerogels with pores within the mesoporous range (13-50 nm). After optimizing the experimental conditions, a comparison was made of the boron adsorption capacities in water. The relationship of the structural and functionalization parameters is discussed and the importance of the surface topology in the final adsorption behaviour is revealed. Hence…
Coreconstitution of bacterial ATP synthase with monomeric bacteriorhodopsin into liposomes. A comparison between the efficiency of monomeric bacterio…
1987
The conditions for coreconstitution of a bacterial ATP synthase and bacteriorhodopsin into lecithin liposomes and for light driven ATP synthesis have been optimized. A rate of maximally 280 nmol ATP min-1 mg ATP synthase-1 was achieved with monomerized bacteriorhodopsin compared with a rate of up to 45 nmol ATP min-1 mg-1 found for proteoliposomes containing bacteriorhodopsin in the form of purple membrane patches. The different rates are explained by the finding that monomeric bacteriorhodopsin is more homogeneously distributed among the liposomes than the purple membrane patches. The final activities depended on both the purification method for the two proteins and the coreconstitution pr…