1. Introduction. Reverse osmosis (RO) processes have been widely used in many applications, especially for producing nearly pure water from seawater in desalination plants, and have seen a dramatic increase in their market share in recent years (Elimelech and Phillip, 2011, Fritzmann et al., 2007, Ghaffour et al., 2013, Greenlee et al., 2009, Kim et al., 2009, Malaeb and Ayoub, 2011, Semiat ...