报告人：Muataz Ali Atieh 教授

报告时间：2023年5月29日（周一）15:00

报告地点：复材新大楼A212学术交流室

主持人：杨曙光 副主任

报告人简介：Dr. Muataz Ali Atieh is a Full Professor at the mechanical and nuclear engineering department and the head of the water desalination research group at the University of Sharjah. Prior to joining UOS, he worked as a Full Professor at a sustainable program, college of engineering at Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU), and Senior Scientist at Water Research Center at the Qatar Environment and Energy Research Institute (QEERI). Dr. Ali is the Founder of the first program in the world “Chemical and Water Desalination Engineering” and the Head of desalination group, University of Sharjah, UAE. According to Dr. Ali is one of Tope 2% Scientist worldwide in Chemical Engineering His main research focuses on the development of innovative polymeric and ceramic membranes, which possess special functions such as fouling resistant, self-cleaning, higher flux, and high salt rejection for water treatment and desalination applications. He also worked on developing new types of adsorbents that have wide applications in domestic and industrial wastewater. He has extensive knowledge of outline and detailed design as well as process optimization of existing and start-up RO seawater and wastewater treatment processes. His current research focused also on future prospects and the development of desalination technologies driven by both conventional and renewable energies. He raised more than $ 3 million in grants, industrial projects, and start-up funds with a successful implementation of a new process for the water desalination industry.  He organized, chaired, and co-chaired various international conferences, workshops, and seminars on water, and energy. He was honored with a number of prestigious awards, including among many, the Excellence Research Award from King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals, 2013, Saudi Arabia, and Best team award from Qatar Environment and Energy Research Institute (QEERI), 2016, Qatar.  Out of his 15 years' experience in technology and development for water treatment and desalination his research works led to file and award 59 USA patents and publishing more than 161 ISI journal publications and presenting his finding in 51 international conferences. 

报告摘要：Water is the new oil of the 21st century due to increased consumption and demand. High-quality fresh water is defined as water that does not have any negative health consequences for humans. High-quality water that is free of contamination is necessary for humans and many industries such as oil and gas, petrochemicals, pharmaceuticals, and food processing. To meet the huge demand for freshwater, half of the freshwater production in UAE are coming from energy-intensive Multi-Stage Flash (MSF) and Multi-Effect Distillation (MED) technologies. These energy-intensive processes consume a significant share of GCC oil and gas. In general, thermal desalination is an energy-intensive technique and requires the burning of large amounts of fossil fuels, which are vulnerable to global market prices. Moreover, the burning of fossil fuels has a drastic impact on the environment in terms of solid waste and gas emissions. Therefore, it is crucial to find acceptable alternative sources of energy for desalination.  Nowadays the membrane processes such as reverse osmosis (RO), nanofiltration (NF), ultrafiltration (UF) and microfiltration (MF) are regarded as the most attractive methods for drinking water treatment, brackish and seawater desalination, wastewater treatment and reuse. Membrane process is a key element and a “heart” of any treatment process.   Desalination by Reverse Osmosis (RO) membranes is the most cost-effective and attractive solution that will enable the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. The future of RO utilization in the UAE is promising. The RO market is expected to register substantial growth during the coming decade, attributed mainly to the increase in the population and the rapid growth of the economy of the region. Although RO desalination is used to produce half of the fresh water in UAE, the country is planning to install even more RO desalination plants to reduce the energy requirements for desalination.  GCC is the largest desalination market in the world, accounting for 50 % of the global market.  Although GCC is moving towards RO desalination, there are still environmental problems limiting the application of polymeric membranes in the the GCC countries in general. Polymeric membranes currently are the most commonly used in the market; however, there are still several problems, which are related to their fouling, chemical, mechanical and thermal stability. Therefore, development of novel membranes with improved performance and properties is of crucial importance for practical application of the membrane processes. The commercially available membranes are not well suited to the harsh conditions of the Arabian Gulf seawater that include: high water temperature, high salinity of (40-45 g/L), extremely high fouling potential of seawater (algae bloom and microbiological fouling, colloidal and organic fouling, scaling, etc.).   For this reason, the RO desalination plants at GCC countries contain pre-treatment stages to reduce the salinity and remove the contamination before the RO step. Also, thousands of farms in the UAE are out of service because of the high salinity of groundwater that makes the water salty and unusable for agriculture applications. No commercial membranes are available to treat these types of water. Besides, the hot weather conditions in the UAE make it a good environment for the growth of bacteria and microorganisms, which cause membrane biofouling. Therefore, there is a need to develop local efficient RO membranes with improved performance and properties to treat UAE seawater and brackish water to provide water security in the country. Based on our lab-scale experiments, we have developed lab-scale A4 size RO membrane sheets that have shown high salt rejection, high chlorine resistance, good antifouling characteristics, high flux, high separation removal, and high performance compared to commercial membranes.