报告人简介：Dr. Muataz Ali Atieh is a Full Professor at themechanical and nuclear engineering department and the head of the waterdesalination research group at the University of Sharjah. Prior to joining UOS,he worked as a Full Professor at a sustainable program, college of engineeringat Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU), and Senior Scientist at Water ResearchCenter at the Qatar Environment and Energy Research Institute (QEERI). Dr. Aliis the Founder of the first program in the world “Chemical and Water DesalinationEngineering” and the Head of desalination group, University of Sharjah, UAE.According to Dr. Ali is one of Tope 2% Scientist worldwide in ChemicalEngineering His main research focuses on the development of innovativepolymeric and ceramic membranes, which possess special functions such asfouling resistant, self-cleaning, higher flux, and high salt rejection forwater treatment and desalination applications. He also worked on developing newtypes of adsorbents that have wide applications in domestic and industrialwastewater. He has extensive knowledge of outline and detailed design as wellas process optimization of existing and start-up RO seawater and wastewatertreatment processes. His current research focused also on future prospects andthe development of desalination technologies driven by both conventional andrenewable energies. He raised more than $ 3 million in grants, industrialprojects, and start-up funds with a successful implementation of a new processfor the water desalination industry.  Heorganized, chaired, and co-chaired various international conferences,workshops, and seminars on water, and energy. He was honored with a number ofprestigious awards, including among many, the Excellence Research Award fromKing Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals, 2013, Saudi Arabia, and Bestteam award from Qatar Environment and Energy Research Institute (QEERI), 2016,Qatar.  Out of his 15 years' experiencein technology and development for water treatment and desalination his researchworks led to file and award 59 USA patents and publishing more than 161 ISIjournal publications and presenting his finding in 51 internationalconferences. 

报告摘要：Water is the new oil of the 21st century due toincreased consumption and demand. High-quality fresh water is defined as waterthat does not have any negative health consequences for humans. High-qualitywater that is free of contamination is necessary for humans and many industriessuch as oil and gas, petrochemicals, pharmaceuticals, and food processing. Tomeet the huge demand for freshwater, half of the freshwater production in UAEare coming from energy-intensive Multi-Stage Flash (MSF) and Multi-EffectDistillation (MED) technologies. These energy-intensive processes consume asignificant share of GCC oil and gas. In general, thermal desalination is anenergy-intensive technique and requires the burning of large amounts of fossilfuels, which are vulnerable to global market prices. Moreover, the burning offossil fuels has a drastic impact on the environment in terms of solid wasteand gas emissions. Therefore, it is crucial to find acceptable alternativesources of energy for desalination. Nowadays the membrane processes such as reverse osmosis (RO),nanofiltration (NF), ultrafiltration (UF) and microfiltration (MF) are regardedas the most attractive methods for drinking water treatment, brackish andseawater desalination, wastewater treatment and reuse. Membrane process is akey element and a “heart” of any treatment process.   Desalination by Reverse Osmosis (RO)membranes is the most cost-effective and attractive solution that will enablethe Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. The future of RO utilization inthe UAE is promising. The RO market is expected to register substantial growthduring the coming decade, attributed mainly to the increase in the populationand the rapid growth of the economy of the region. Although RO desalination isused to produce half of the fresh water in UAE, the country is planning toinstall even more RO desalination plants to reduce the energy requirements fordesalination.  GCC is the largestdesalination market in the world, accounting for 50 % of the global market.  Although GCC is moving towards ROdesalination, there are still environmental problems limiting the applicationof polymeric membranes in the the GCC countries in general. Polymeric membranescurrently are the most commonly used in the market; however, there are stillseveral problems, which are related to their fouling, chemical, mechanical andthermal stability. Therefore, development of novel membranes with improvedperformance and properties is of crucial importance for practical applicationof the membrane processes. The commercially available membranes are not wellsuited to the harsh conditions of the Arabian Gulf seawater that include: highwater temperature, high salinity of (40-45 g/L), extremely high foulingpotential of seawater (algae bloom and microbiological fouling, colloidal andorganic fouling, scaling, etc.).  Forthis reason, the RO desalination plants at GCC countries contain pre-treatmentstages 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 highsalinity of groundwater that makes the water salty and unusable for agricultureapplications. No commercial membranes are available to treat these types ofwater. Besides, the hot weather conditions in the UAE make it a goodenvironment for the growth of bacteria and microorganisms, which cause membranebiofouling. Therefore, there is a need to develop local efficient RO membraneswith improved performance and properties to treat UAE seawater and brackishwater to provide water security in the country. Based on our lab-scaleexperiments, we have developed lab-scale A4 size RO membrane sheets that haveshown high salt rejection, high chlorine resistance, good antifoulingcharacteristics, high flux, high separation removal, and high performancecompared to commercial membranes.