Temperature Effect on Forward Osmosis

Forward osmosis, or simply, osmosis, refers to a process by which a solvent moves across a semipermeable membrane due to the difference in the solute concentration established across the membrane. Because of its spontaneous nature, forward osmosis has received immense attention during the last few decades, particularly for its diverse applications, which include municipal wastewater treatment, seawater desalination, membrane bioreactor, potable water purification, food processing, drug delivery, energy generation, and so forth. Of many parameters that determine the performance of the forward osmosis process, the most fundamental factor that impacts performance is temperature. Considering the importance of the temperature on the forward osmosis process, there have been only a limited number of studies about the effect of temperature on the osmosis-driven process. In this chapter, we discuss the temperature effect on the forward osmosis process from two main aspects. First, we provide an extensive and in-depth survey on the currently available studies related to the anisothermal osmosis phenomena. Second, we then discuss a state-of-the-art theoretical framework that describes the anisothermal forward osmosis process that may shed light on achieving an enhanced performance via temperature control.