Sulfur-containing air pollutants as draw solution for fertilizer drawn forward osmosis desalination process for irrigation use

•Byproduct of H2 production process was tested as fertilizer draw solution for FO.•This byproduct has better performance when working with TFC membrane over CTA.•The less ammonium sulfite byproduct contains, the better performance it has.•This byproduct is most suitable for brackish water having TDS of 5 g/L NaCl.

This study investigated suitability and performance of the sulfur-based seed solution (SBSS) as a draw solution (DS), a byproduct taken from the photoelectrochemical (PEC) process where the SBSS is used as an electrolyte for H2 production. This SBSS DS is composed of a mixture of ammonium sulfate ((NH4)2SO4) and ammonium sulfite ((NH4)2SO3), and it can be utilized as fertilizer for fertilizer drawn forward osmosis (FDFO) desalination of saline water. The FDFO process employed with thin-film composite (TFC) membrane and showed that the process performance (i.e. water flux and reverse salt flux) is better than that with cellulose triacetate (CTA) membrane. In addition, it produced high water flux of 19 LMH using SBSS as DS at equivalent concentration at 1 M and 5 g/L NaCl of feed solution (model saline water). Experimental results showed that the reverse salt flux of SBSS increased with the increase in pH of the DS and that lowering the concentration of ammonium sulfite in the SBSS led to the higher water flux of feed solution. The result also demonstrated that this SBSS is practically suitable for the FDFO process toward development of water-energy-food nexus technology using sulfur chemicals-containing air pollutant.

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