Has Adoption of Forward Osmosis Stalled?

Lack of Significant Progress the Past 6 Years



After seeing several papers presented at the WateReuse Symposium in Dallas in 2008, I was intrigued with the potential for forward osmosis in water and wastewater treatment with a lot of research completed on these applications and a lot of promising research underway (see 2010 post). I did wonder though if FO would be more of a niche technology due to process limitations such as the complexities of recovering water from saline and organic draw solutions. My prediction in 2010 that FO would be a niche technology appears to be spot on so far. While Oasys Water, one of the FO pioneers, has found some applications for produced water treatment in the O&G market, I am not aware of any adoption of FO in the municipal market.

 
I scanned the proceedings from the AWWA/AMTA Membrane Technology Conference the past several years to see if there were any trends in papers presented on FO – this conference has a good mix of research and full-scale case studies and I think is a good barometer of what is upcoming in the membrane industry and what is being commercialized. The reducing and flattening number of FO presentations suggests interest in this technology for mainstream water treatment is waning, perhaps due to some of the technological barriers preventing commercialization. Also, in contrast to the several presentations I saw at the 2008 WaterReuse Symposium, at the 2016 Symposium I did not see any FO papers on the proceedings.

I did a quick scan of the program for the upcoming 2017 AWWA/AMTA Membrane Technology Conference and found three platform papers and one poster on FO but for very niche applications and all presented by universities – so nothing to demonstrate that the technology is moving towards mainstream commercial implementation.


Forward Osmosis Papers & Posters at AWWA/AMTA Membrane Technology Conferences

 This trend in papers presented is in contrast to an article published in ‘World Water: Water Reuse & Desalination’s Autumn 2015 issue titled “Will forward osmosis always be a niche market” (O’Callaghan and Pearce). This article, based on a BlueTech Research Insight report, showed how there had been an uptick in the number of research papers published and patents registered from 2011 to 2013, suggesting increasing interest in building IP positions in the technology. A graph showing the number of published research papers from 2011 to 2014 did show a steady increase to 2013 but there was a slight drop to 2014 and I would not be surprised that this drop has continued to 2016 based on the US conferences I have looked at. The article does say that despite the research interest there are technical hurdles such as membrane fouling that have prevented the technology making any mainstream commercial impact and limited FO to some niche applications. It also makes a good point that the players in the FO market have been venture backed smaller companies, while the larger establish players in the membrane market have been watching from the sidelines.

The lower energy costs of FO compared to RO are certainly enticing although since 2008, significantly lower energy and oil costs may have reduced the attractiveness of this benefit, keeping the big players out of the FO market. One big change since 2008 is that the public is a lot more accepting of potable reuse following severe droughts in Texas and California. That could make the application of FO at combined seawater desalination/wastewater outfalls to reduce the energy costs of desalination, as described in my 2010 post, a lot more feasible. We will probably still need to see energy costs escalate again to get some serious interest from the larger players to invest in FO, sort out the technical issues and finally bring it to large scale commercialization. It will be interesting to see where FO is at in another six years!