This work made use of the sewage sludge ash (SSA) to enhance thermo-responsive hydrogel for driving forward-osmosis (FO) process. Results showed that owing to the porous structure and intermolecular interactions between the ionized groups of monomers and the chemical surface of silica, the SSA-based thermo-responsive hydrogel (SSA2.5H) had increased swelling capacity and osmotic pressure, resulting in an average water flux (2.33 LMH) twice as high as the hydrogel without adding SSA (1.18 LMH) during 24 h FO with DI water or different concentrations (2000–8000 ppm) of NaCl as feed solution. More importantly, SSA2.5H can maintain good thermo-responsive dehydration performance in spite of an enhancement to its swelling ability. 93.8% of the adsorbed water can be retrieved from SSA2.5H in water bath of moderate temperature (60 °C) for 10 min and water flux can be recovered to 94.4% of the initial value after 4 times of hydrogel regeneration during FO as draw agent. Therefore, this work showed that SSA was an excellent modifier to enhance the thermo-responsive hydrogel for improving permeation performance in FO and lowering down the actual energy requirement for water recovery and draw agent regeneration.

这项工作利用污水污泥灰（SSA）来增强热敏性水凝胶，以驱动正向渗透（FO）过程。结果表明，由于单体的离子化基团与二氧化硅化学表面之间的多孔结构和分子间相互作用，基于SSA的热敏水凝胶（SSA2.5H）的溶胀能力和渗透压均增加，导致平均水在去离子水或去离子水或不同浓度的氯化钠（2000-8000 ppm）进水24小时内不添加SSA（1.18 LMH）的情况下，通量（2.33 LMH）是水凝胶的两倍。更重要的是，尽管SSA2.5H的溶胀能力有所增强，但仍可保持良好的热响应脱水性能。可以从SSA2中回收93.8％的吸附水。在适中温度（60°C）的水浴中保持5H持续10分钟，在FO作吸水剂再生水凝胶4次后，水通量可恢复到初始值的94.4％。因此，这项工作表明，SSA是一种出色的改性剂，可增强热响应性水凝胶，从而改善FO中的渗透性能，并降低水回收和牵引剂再生的实际能量需求。