REMOVAL OF TRIETHYL PHOSPHATE FROM AQUEOUS SOLUTION BY FORWARD OSMOSIS

Water demand growth and water resources contamination by industrial effluents are currently the main challenging issues (Phuntsho et al., 2017). During recent decades, the organic pollution of surface runoff and groundwater have increasingly raised due to excessive use of pesticides in agriculture (Köck-Schulmeyer et al., 2013). Among them, organophosphate compounds contain more than one-third of the agricultural toxins used in the world. Triethyl phosphate (TEP) with the chemical formula C6H15O4P is one of the simple organophosphate compounds, which is widely used as a solvent or intermediate for the production pesticides. Forward osmosis (FO) is a potential membrane technology that utilizes the osmotic pressure gradient as the driving force for water transport through a semi-permeable membrane (Nematzadeh et al., 2020). FO technology can be able to show reduced cost, high recovery, and reduced fouling propensity, compared to the hydraulic pressure-driven membrane process. Researchers has evaluated the usage of FO to remove agricultural pesticide and pharmaceutical contaminants from the effluent. They reported higher water flux and contaminants rejection (Köck-Schulmeyer et al., 2013, Khanzada et al., 2020). In this study, the main objectives are to evaluate the water flux and TEP removal efficiency from wastewater by FO process and the effect temperature on them.