The undergraduate students of Chemical Engineering Department have successfully designed and fabricated 'Forward Osmosis Cell'

"The undergraduate students of Chemical Engineering Department have successfully designed and fabricated 'Forward Osmosis Cell' in the departmental laboratories. The group of students of 5th semester comprising of Mr. Zohaib, Mr. Hamza, Mr. Taimoor, Miss Abeera and Miss Sara completed the design and fabrication of the unit using indigenous resources. The unit will be used for the treatment of industrial waste water. Forward osmosis (FO) is an osmotic process that, like reverse osmosis (RO), uses a semi-permeable membrane to effect separation of water from dissolved solutes. The driving force for this separation is an osmotic pressure gradient, such that a "draw" solution of high concentration (relative to that of the feed solution), is used to induce a net flow of water through the membrane into the draw solution, thus effectively separating the feed water from its solutes. In contrast, the reverse osmosis process uses hydraulic pressure as the driving force for separation, which serves to counteract the osmotic pressure gradient that would otherwise favor water flux from the permeate to the feed. Hence significantly more energy is required for reverse osmosis compared to forward osmosis."