Pilot-Scale Reverse Osmosis Performance Data for Nutrient Recovery from Urine

A study evaluating a 300 L·h⁻¹ pilot-scale reverse osmosis system for concentrating nutrients from source-separated human urine. The dataset likely contains performance metrics for three calcium removal pretreatment methods and RO system parameters like permeate flux and nutrient rejection. The work was authored by Njabulo Thela and shared on figshare under a CC-BY-4.0 license.

Use Cases

• Compare the cost-effectiveness of calcium removal pretreatments based on the reported energy requirements and total treatment costs.
• Model reverse osmosis system performance under scaling constraints based on reported flux decline and nutrient rejection rates.
• Assess the impact of feed concentration on urea rejection based on the described decrease from 87% to 76%.
• Evaluate process resilience to energy price fluctuations based on the comparison of integrated process costs.

Strengths

• Provides specific performance metrics for a 300 L·h⁻¹ pilot-scale system, which is a step beyond laboratory studies.
• Includes concrete numerical results, such as potassium bicarbonate achieving 99% calcium removal in 0.17 h and carbon dioxide sparging costing $6.96 m⁻³.
• Compares three distinct pretreatment methods (air bubbling, CO₂ sparging, potassium bicarbonate) across multiple criteria like kinetics and energy use.

Limitations

• The dataset is described in a 398.5 KB PDF file; the underlying structured data tables are not directly accessible.
• Row count and column-level documentation are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment for direct machine learning applications.
• Data freshness should be verified as the last update is listed as a future date (2026-04-28).

Provenance

Source

figshare, author Njabulo Thela

Collection Method

Experimental data from a pilot-scale study evaluating reverse osmosis and pretreatment methods.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-04-28 05:27:32