Hung Cong Duong

• PhD Eng., MS Eng., Bachelor Eng.
• Deputy Head of School at Le Quy Don Technical University

A novel draw solution containing sodium chloride (NaCl) coupled with polyethylene glycol tert-octylphenyl ether surfactant (i.e., denoted as TX114) was used for the forward osmosis (FO) process to achieve high permeate flux and minimum specific reverse salt flux. Experimental results demonstrate that the mixture of 3M NaCl/0.6 mM TX114 draw solutio...

Purpose of Review Packaged reverse osmosis (RO) systems are often synonymous with industrial water supply and high quality water reuse. These RO systems can satisfy specific industries with stringent water quality specifications. They are also compact for deployment in basement of commercial buildings for sewer mining. Increasing applications of pa...

A novel silver@silver chloride/carbon nanofiber (Ag@AgCl/CNF) hybrid was synthesized by electrospinning, heat treament, and subsequent in-situ chemical oxidation strategy. The synthesized materials were characterized using XRD, FTIR, UV-Vis DRS, SEM, and EDX. The experimental results reveal that the electrospun AgNO3/PAN was carbonized and reduced...

Hybrid anaerobic osmotic membrane bioreactors (AnOsMBRs) have been considered a new direction of research in municipal wastewater treatment with excellent merits such as high pollutant removal, low membrane fouling, high potential in nutrient recovery and biogas production. This is the first breakthrough technology/novel multibarrier system to reac...

Data corroborated in this study highlights laundry wastewater as a primary source of microfibers (MFs) in the aquatic environment. MFs can negatively impact the aquatic ecosystem via five possible pathways, namely, acting as carriers of other contaminats, physical damage to digestive systems of aquatic organisms, blocking the digestive tract, relea...

Determination of the dynamics between microalgae and bacteria in pig farming biogas digestate is vital for a consistent and reliable application towards sustainable wastewater treatment and biofuel production. This study assesses the reliability of using physicochemical parameters as indicators for the rapid evaluation of microalgal bacterial dynam...

Membrane distillation (MD) has been increasingly explored for treatment of various hyper saline waters, including lithium chloride (LiCl) solutions used in liquid desiccant air-conditioning (LDAC) systems. In this study, the regeneration of liquid desiccant LiCl solution by a pilot direct contact membrane distillation (DCMD) process is assessed usi...

The influence of operating parameters (i.e. membrane surface area and water flux) and membrane fouling on FO nutrient retention was examined. A higher water flux and larger membrane surface area significantly improved total ammonia nitrogen retention, owing to the uncoupling of solute and solvent flux and shorter filtration time, respectively. Phos...

This study reports the performance of a new combined flowform cascade (FC) and constructed wetland (CW) system to enhance nitrogen removal and biological degradation of urban wastewater. A series of 8 FC units at the flow rate of 200 L/h could markedly increase the dissolved oxygen level in the wastewater from the initial value of 0.2 mg/L to 5.6 m...

Membrane distillation (MD) is considered the most suitable process for small-scale seawater desalination to augment fresh water supply in remote areas. In this study, a pilot seawater MD desalination process was trialled for potable water supply on a remote and isolated island in Vietnam. The pilot MD system was based on air gap membrane distillati...

This study designed a Dynamic-Osmotic membrane bioreactor/nanofiltration (OsMBR/NF) system for municipal wastewater treatment and reuse. Results indicated that a continuously rotating FO module with 60 RPM in Dynamic-OsMBR system could enhance shear stress and reduce cake layer of foulants, leading to higher flux (50%) compared to Traditional-OsMBR...

Ammonium nitrate is an important fertilizer and industrial explosive. The production of ammonium nitrate entails the generation of a large volume of condensate laden with nitrogen that must be treated before environment discharge. Results in this study show that through appropriate membrane selection, over 90% rejection of ammonium nitrate can be a...

This work provides a new perspective on small-scale treatment systems to remove arsenic from groundwater for potable applications in low-income communities. Data corroborated from the literature highlight a significant challenge to providing potable water in a financially sustainable manner in arsenic affected areas. Analysis of the literature also...

Membrane distillation (MD) has been increasingly explored for treatment of various hyper saline waters, including lithium chloride (LiCl) solutions used in liquid desiccant air-conditioning (LDAC) systems. In this study, the regeneration of liquid desiccant LiCl solution by a pilot direct contact membrane distillation (DCMD) process is assessed usi...

Urine has been considered as an ideal nutrient source for microalgae cultivation thanks to its composition containing the high concentrations of nitrogen and phosphorus. Herein, the microalgae growth in urine was evaluated in a lab-scale membrane photobioreactor (MPBR) system. This work aimed to validate the influence of low biomass retention times...

Water resources vulnerability assessment provides the basis for the policymakers and the stakeholders regarding the state of the river basin to be focused for its better management. This research aimed to assess the vulnerability index (VI) of the upper part of the Dong Nai (UPDN) river basin, which plays a crucial role for the socio-economic devel...

Membrane distillation (MD) has great potential for the treatment of hyper saline waters, including liquid desiccant solutions used in air-conditioning systems. Previous experimental investigations have demonstrated the technical feasibility of MD for regeneration of liquid desiccant solutions. In this study, a direct contact membrane distillation (...

Membrane distillation (MD) has emerged as a promising technology for seawater desalination to provide drinking water. The most considerable advantage of MD is the capacity to utilize thermal energy to reduce the energy cost of the solar-driven MD seawater desalination systems. However, limited thermal efficiency is one of the key challenges that pr...

Effective treatment of wastewaters laden with heavy metals is critical to the sustainable social and economic growth of metal recycling villages in Vietnam. Currently, most wastewaters from metal recycling villages in Vietnam are directly discharged, posing great threats to the environment and human health. In this study, a small-scale combined coa...

Purpose of Review Membrane distillation (MD) has been known as a promising water treatment process for many years. However, despite its advantages, MD has never been able to compete with other processes for industrial water treatment and supply. Instead, it has been orientated towards several unique strategic water treatment applications. This revi...

This study evaluated the potential of extracting acetic acid from rumen fluid by forward osmosis (FO). Unlike other FO applications to extract water and reduce the feed water volume, this research used FO to mimic the ruminant intestines for extracting acetic acid from rumen fluid to a clean matrix with a minimum water flux. The FO extraction of ac...

For the first time, a novel sponge-based moving bed-anaerobic osmosis membrane bioreactor/membrane distillation (AnOMBR/MD) system using mixed Na3PO4/EDTA–2Na as the draw solution was employed to treat wastewater for enhanced water flux and reduced membrane fouling. Results indicated that the moving sponge-AnOMBR/MD system obtained a stable water f...

Membrane distillation (MD) embodies ideal attributes for the regeneration of liquid desiccant solutions used in air-conditioning systems. The MD process has been experimentally proven technically viable for the regeneration of liquid desiccant solutions; however, it suffers severely from temperature and concentration polarisation effects. In this s...

Finding suitable draw solutions is still a major problem when developing FO technologies. This study represents the first time a mixed trivalent draw solution containing of EDTA–2Na and Na3PO4 was systemically studied for FO performance. The objective here was to achieve simultaneously low reverse salt flux and high water flux. The FO results showe...

Purpose of Review Regeneration of liquid desiccant solutions is critical for the liquid desiccant air conditioning (LDAC) process. In most LDAC systems, the weak desiccant solution is regenerated using the energy-intensive thermal evaporation method which suffers from desiccant carry-over. Recently, membrane processes have gained increasing interes...

Purpose of Review This review aims to succinctly summarize recent advances of four key membrane processes (e.g., reverse osmosis (RO), forward osmosis (FO), electrodialysis (ED), and membrane distillation (MD)) in membrane materials and process designs, to elucidate the contributions of these advances to the steadfast growth of brackish water membr...

In many years, the nickel electroplating technique has been applied to coat nickel on other materials for their increased properties. Nickel electroplating has played a vital role in our modern society but also caused considerable environmental concerns due to the mass discharge of its wastewater (i.e. containing nickel and other heavy metals) to t...

Seawater and brackish water desalination has been a practical approach to mitigating the global fresh water scarcity. Current large-scale desalination installations worldwide can complementarily augment the global fresh water supplies, and their capacities are steadily increasing year-on-year. Despite substantial technological advance, desalination...

The capacity of membrane distillation (MD) to regenerate three commonly used liquid desiccant solutions (i.e. CaCl2, LiCl, and a mixture of CaCl2/LiCl) for liquid desiccant air-conditioners (LDAC) was evaluated. The results demonstrate considerable impact of the concentration polarisation effect on the process water flux during MD regeneration of t...

Considering the time-varying, uncertain and non-linear properties of the wastewater treatment process (WWTPs), a novel multi-kernel relevance vector machine (MRVM) soft sensor based on time difference (TD) is proposed to predict the quality-relevant but difficult-to-measure variable. Firstly, a novel dimension reduction technique is introduced to r...

Membrane distillation (MD) has several important attributes for the desalination of challenging solutions. These attributes include the ability to concentrate feed solutions to saturation, low operating hydraulic pressure and hence a reduction in capital and operational costs, and compatibility with low-grade waste heat and solar thermal energy. Ho...

Desalination of seawater using membrane distillation (MD) can be a practical approach to mitigating the fresh water scarcity in Vietnam. This paper provides a comprehensive review of the seawater MD desalination process. The fundamentals of the MD process including configurations, membrane modules, membrane properties, and heat and mass transfer me...

In this study, a novel hydrophobic, microporous membrane was fabricated from styrene-butadiene-styrene (SBS) polymer using electrospinning and evaluated for membrane distillation applications. Compared to a commercially available polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) membrane, the SBS membrane had larger membrane pore size and fiber diameter and comparabl...

Membrane distillation (MD) has emerged as a promising process for seawater desalination applications to augment fresh water supply in remote coastal areas. Amongst four basic MD configurations, air gap membrane distillation (AGMD) exhibits the highest thermal efficiency, and thus is the most used configuration for small-scale seawater desalination....

A computer model was developed to simulate the performance of an integrated solar thermal driven direct contact membrane distillation (DCMD) system for seawater desalination using recorded weather data. The results highlight the importance of simulating the DCMD process together with the energy source. Indeed, when considered in isolation from the...

The connection between operating temperature and membrane scaling/cleaning during an air gap membrane distillation (AGMD) process of seawater has been systematically elucidated in this study. Experimental and mathematically simulated data demonstrate the profound influences of feed salinity and membrane scaling on water flux at various operating te...

Water treatment using membrane processes can be a pragmatic approach to mitigate the current fresh water scarcity in Vietnam. This paper provides a comprehensive review of mature and emerging membrane processes destined for water treatment. These processes include pressure-driven filtration (eg microfiltration, ultrafiltration, nanofiltration, a...

Membrane scaling and mitigation techniques during air gap membrane distillation (AGMD) of seawater were investigated. The results showed a strong influence of AGMD operating temperature on not only the process water flux but also membrane scaling and subsequent cleaning efficiency. Elevating feed/coolant temperature from 35/25 to 60/50 °C increased...

Membrane distillation (MD) and membrane electrolysis (ME) were evaluated for simultaneous fresh water extraction and NaOH production from a mixture of NaCl and NaHCO3 to simulate the composition of coal seam gas (CSG) reverse osmosis (RO) brine. Experimental results demonstrate the potential of MD for producing fresh water and simultaneously concen...

This study aimed to optimise an air gap membrane distillation (AGMD) system for seawater desalination with respect to distillate production as well as thermal and electrical energy consumption. Pilot evaluation data shows a notable influence of evaporator inlet temperature and water circulation rate on process performance. An increase in both disti...

Seawater desalination by membrane distillation (MD) has great potential for fresh water provision in small and remote areas. Amongst four basic MD configurations, direct contact membrane distillation (DCMD) has a simple arrangement; thus, it is most suited for small-scale seawater desalination application. In this study, membrane scaling during a s...

Brine management is a major bottleneck for coal seam gas (CSG) production in Australia. This study investigated the concentration of CSG reverse osmosis (RO) brine using a pilot membrane distillation (MD). The system was equipped with a novel spiral-wound air gap membrane distillation (AGMD) module. By operating the pilot MD system at low feed temp...

As a thermally driven process, membrane distillation (MD) has great potential for treatment of brine streams from upstream desalination processes to reduce brine volumes and enhance brine management. However, a major hindrance to the MD operation is the deposition of sparingly soluble salts on the membrane surface causing scaling and salinity leaka...