{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,10,31]],"date-time":"2026-10-31T17:30:07Z","timestamp":1793467807824,"version":"4.5.0"},"reference-count":54,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"9","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2026,8,23]],"date-time":"2026-08-23T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1787443200000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Membranes"],"abstract":"<jats:p>Reverse osmosis (RO) desalination is a major technology for freshwater production in arid regions, but its energy demand becomes more challenging when the system is supplied by variable renewable energy. This study presents an offline digital-twin-assisted decision-support framework for dynamic RO under Kuwait solar-availability conditions. Within this framework, the predictive models are driven primarily by the dynamic RO process variables, while NASA Prediction Of Worldwide Energy Resources (POWER) data provide the Kuwait solar-availability context, and the PV power margin serves as a scenario-level energy indicator. The purpose is to predict instantaneous permeate flow rate, estimate specific energy consumption, and identify energy-efficient operating conditions using machine learning. Kuwait City was used as the solar case-study location. Hourly solar and meteorological data were obtained from NASA POWER, while dynamic RO membrane data were obtained from the open experimental wave desalination dataset published by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) through Data.gov and the Marine and Hydrokinetic Data Repository. The RO dataset includes steady-state, ramp, sinusoidal, and Wave Energy Converter SIMulator (WEC-Sim) pressure\/flow experiments. The process-flow image used in the system description was also taken from the same NREL dataset and is cited in the figure caption. The raw RO files were cleaned, harmonized, and transformed into a process-informed modeling dataset. Derived features included pressure rate, recovery ratio, salt rejection, estimated pump power, specific energy consumption (SEC), PV power margin, and rolling pressure\/flow features. Three supervised regression models were tested: Gradient Boosting, Random Forest, and XGBoost. A representative subset of 60,000 records was used to preserve the main experimental conditions while reducing redundancy in the densely sampled sequential data. Results show that permeate flow rate can be predicted with high accuracy using Gradient Boosting (R2 = 0.981; RMSE = 0.161 L\/min). The moderate energy prediction performance yielded an R2 of 0.654 and RMSE of 7.570 kWh\/m3 for Random Forest. The accuracy of permeate conductivity predictions was lower (R2 = 0.257; RMSE = 245.44 \u00b5S\/cm) because membrane and feed characterizing parameters should be included for an adequate water quality control. The proposed approach is best suited as an offline decision-support framework for dynamic RO process analysis.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/membranes16090281","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2026,8,24]],"date-time":"2026-08-24T09:20:02Z","timestamp":1787563202000},"page":"281","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":3,"title":["An Offline Digital-Twin-Assisted Decision-Support Framework for Dynamic RO Under Kuwait Solar-Availability Conditions"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"16","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0009-0009-2364-0805","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Fajer M.","family":"Alelaj","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Water Research Center, Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research (KISR), Kuwait City 13109, Kuwait"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-0009-8290","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Mohammed A.","family":"Bou-Rabee","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Electrical Engineering, College of Technical Studies, Public Authority for Applied Education and Training (PAAET), Kuwait City 13092, Kuwait"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-4352-7876","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Mustafa","family":"Fadel","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"College of Engineering, Mustansiriyah University, Baghdad 10052, Iraq"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Shafqat","family":"Aziz","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"E-Commerce Project Designer, Plymouth Hope, Plymouth PL4 8AA, UK"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Adil Aslam","family":"Mir","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Computer Engineering, Ankara Y\u0131ld\u0131r\u0131m Beyaz\u0131t University, Ankara 06050, Turkey"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Abdulrahman","family":"Alharbi","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Electrical Engineering, Jubail Industrial College, Jubail 31961, Saudi Arabia"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0009-0002-5914-0510","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Hussain","family":"Al-Sairfi","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Water Research Center, Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research (KISR), Kuwait City 13109, Kuwait"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2026,8,23]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","first-page":"100458","article-title":"A comprehensive review of reverse osmosis desalination: Technology, water sources, membrane processes, fouling, and cleaning","volume":"318","author":"Tayeh","year":"2024","journal-title":"Desalin. 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