Biofouling assessment in seawater desalination

The project aims to develop a new method to measure ATP and the bacterial growth potential of seawater to monitor biological fouling in SWRO.

Objectives:
• To develop a new ATP method to monitor the bacterial activity of seawater.
• To develop a method to measure AOC in seawater based on ATP (using a natural consortium of bacteria).
• To establish if a correlation exist between AOC concentration in the feed water of SWRO systems and the biological fouling on RO membrane surface (MFS).
• To applying the newly developed method for ATP and AOC in pilot and/or full scale SWRO plants.

Duration: 2014-2018
Sponsor: Promega, USA
Budget: 140,000 euros
Staff: Maria Kennedy, Sergio Salinas
PhD student: Motasem Abushaban
Partners: Dr. Said Goueli, Dr. Subhanjan Mondal