Currently, desalination is limited by high energy consumption and high operational and maintenance costs. In this study, a new concept of a hollow fiber forward osmosis (HFFO)-based infinity desalination process with minor environmental impacts (free-energy intake and no pretreatment or brine discharge) is suggested. To evaluate the concept, an element-scale HFFO was conducted in both conventional FO and pressure-assisted FO modes, simulating a submerged HFFO operation. In the HFFO test, the impacts of several operating conditions on the performance of the HFFO were investigated to select the best case. Based on these results, the energy costs were calculated and compared with those of a hybrid FO–seawater reverse osmosis (SWRO) process. The HFFO showed a high dilution rate of the draw solution (up to approximately 400%), allowing the downstream SWRO process to operate at 25 bar with the same permeate volume production (recovery rate of 60%). Consequently, the HFFO-based infinity desalination process has an annual energy revenue of 183.83 million USD, compared with a stand-alone two-stage RO process based on a 100,000 m³/day plant.

目前，海水淡化受到高能耗和高运营维护成本的限制。在这项研究中，提出了一种基于中空纤维正向渗透 (HFFO) 的无限海水淡化工艺的新概念，该工艺对环境影响较小（自由能源摄入，无需预处理或盐水排放）。为了评估该概念，在传统 FO 和压力辅助 FO 模式下进行了元素级 HFFO，模拟了水下 HFFO 操作。在 HFFO 测试中，研究了几种操作条件对 HFFO 性能的影响，以选择最佳情况。基于这些结果，计算了能源成本，并将其与混合 FO-海水反渗透 (SWRO) 工艺的能源成本进行了比较。HFFO 显示出抽吸溶液的高稀释率（高达约 400%），允许下游 SWRO 工艺在 25 bar 的压力下以相同的产水量运行（回收率为 60%）。因此，基于 HFFO 的无限海水淡化工艺的年能源收入为 1.8383 亿美元，而基于 100,000 m³ /天植物。