[CCoE Notice] ChBE Seminar: Directions in Desalination

[Grayson, Audrey A]

ChBE Dept. Seminar
10:30am-11:30am, Thursday, June 5, 2014
UH Engineering Bldg 1-Rm 102D
Directions in Desalination
Raphael Semiat
Professor and Chair at Technion- Israel Institute of Technology

ABSTRACT: The population in the world increased significantly during the last 50 years. The quality of life is generally increased along with higher need for energy and water beside increase of environmental issues to be solved. High quality drinking water is essential for day-to-day living, for food production, for better standard of living, for the someplace neglected nature and for industry. The need for water is rapidly increasing and the resources of fresh water cannot deal with all the requirements. Water is not accessible to all as a natural, self-renewable low cost resource. The drought at various regions on earth followed by "desertification" and movement of population towards this "essence of life", calls for different considerations in terms of economic and social effects.
Having used the natural renewable freshwater capacity, many countries are developing several non-conventional sources. Some involve further utilization of natural resources that were hitherto considered of low quality unsuitable to develop. Others involve the creation of new usable waters, of improving qualities so additional water will be suited for a wider array of specific uses (e.g., reclaimed sewage for irrigation and drinking).
The reverse osmosis desalination technique is taking over the market that used to belong to the evaporation processes. Many researchers are trying to develop new techniques like Forward Osmosis, Membrane distillation, Humidification-Dehumidification, Solar based desalination processes, and more. On the other hand, there is a need to improve the quality of the membranes in terms of flux, while maintaining good rejection, overcoming the boron problem, reducing energy consumption, preventing fouling of different types, in order to reduce the overall production cost. Better heat transfer surfaces are needed beside better design to prevent salt precipitation in the evaporation processes. Analyzing the efforts in the different directions, bring the important question: are we doing the right things? Are we going in the right tracks?


BIO:
Raphael Semiat received his at the PhD Technion Israel Institute of Technology, Chemical Engineering department in 1978 on MED desalination. Post Doctorate during 1978-1980 in UH, with the late prof. Abe Dukler. Expert in separation processes with industrial experience in Israel Chemicals Ltd, where he served as a senior research engineer and as the head of the Heat and Mass Transfer Engineering Research Department at IMI. His main research interests are: Process Development; Separation Processes with emphasis on Desalination. Of particular relevance are the research subjects associated with membranes processes and membrane fouling prevention. He has published over than hundred and fifty papers in scientific journals and similar number in conference proceedings. Part of his current research subjects are associated with the industry.
He holds the Yitzhak Rabin Memorial Chair in Science, engineering and management. He served as the director of the Grand Water research Institute and is in charge of the Rabin Desalination Laboratory. He is the Dean of the Wolfson Department of Chemical Engineering, President of the Israel Desalination Society and Co-editor of Desalination Journal.





-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://Bug.EGR.UH.EDU/pipermail/engi-dist/attachments/20140530/d9cf5a62/attachment.html