  The reverse osmosis membrane module is an integral element of a desalination
system as it determines the overall performance of the desalination plant. The
fraction of clean water that can be recovered via this process is often limited
by salt precipitation which plays a critical role in its sustainability. In
this work, we present a model to study the complex interplay between flow,
transport and precipitation processes in reverse osmosis membranes, which
together influence recovery and in turn process sustainability. A reactive
porous interface model describes the membrane with a dynamic evolving porosity
and permeability to capture the scaling and clogging of the membrane. An
open-source finite-volume numerical solver is implemented within the OpenFOAM
library and numerical tests are presented here showing the effect of the
various parameters of the model and the robustness of the model to describe a
wide range of operating conditions.
