A novel low energy fertilizer driven forward osmosis desalination for direct fertigation: Evaluating the performance of fertilizer draw solutions

Forward osmosis (FO) is a novel and emerging low energy technology for desalination. It will be particularly more attractive, if the draw solution separation and recovery are not necessary after FO process. The application of this new concept is briefly described here in this paper for the desalination of saline water for irrigation, using fertilizer as a draw agent. Instead of separating the draw solution from desalinated water, the diluted fertilizer draw solution can be directly applied for fertigation. We report the results on the commonly used chemical fertilizers as FO draw solution. Based on the currently available FO technology, about nine different commonly used fertilizers were finally screened from a comprehensive list of fertilizers and, their performances were assessed in terms of pure water flux and reverse draw solute flux. These results indicate that, most soluble fertilizers can generate osmotic potential much higher than the sea water. The draw solutions of KCl, NaNO3 and KNO3 performed best in terms of water flux while NH4H2PO4, (NH4)2HPO4, Ca(NO3)2 and (NH4)2SO4 had the lowest reverse solute flux. Initial estimation indicates that, 1 kg of fertilizer can extract water ranging from 11 to 29 L from sea water.

► FO process consumes much lower energy than the current desalination technologies.
► Energy need is even lower if diluted DS is directly used such as for fertigation.
► We assessed the performance of 9 selected fertilizers as DS for FO desalination.
► Most soluble fertilizer can be used as DS for FO desalination with seawater.
► We estimate that,1 kg fertilizer can extract 11 to 29 L of water from sea water.