Water insecurities around the world are inspiring research to sustainably generate freshwater. Reverse osmosis (RO) desalination is a leading technology for creating renewable freshwater, however, mineral precipitation from brine byproduct in the modules – which is termed scaling – hinders operation and thereby impedes the practicality of RO. Scaling geochemistry is elusive to physical experimentations, where the precipitation equilibria are not observable in real-time, which is a bottleneck for improving RO towards mitigating scaling phenomena. Software can supplement scaling investigations by predicting scale phenomena from arbitrary parameters of RO desalination, however, these few computational tools are prohibitively expensive or alienates novice users with esoteric details.<br/><br/>We therefore present RO Scaling Software (ROSS) as an open-source and accessible software that elucidates scaling phenomena in RO desalination. The software – which is available in PyPI and as a commend-line UI – is predicated upon 1D reactive transport, where a calculated quantity of water is removed in each module segment with each timestep. The user essentially parameterizes module characteristics and feed geochemistry, executes ROSS, and then yields quantitative predictions of scaling and brine geochemistry. We exemplify ROSS operations with parameters of a commercial BW30-400 RO module and experimental measurements of potential feed sources. ROSS fulfills an important niche in the desalination community for open-source science, and will foster the necessary scaling research that can improve RO technologies and thereby ensure water security throughout the 21<sup>st</sup> century.

ROSS: A geochemical software of reactive transport for desalination research

ACS Spring 2022

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