The fouling of a spiral wound reverse osmosis (RO) membrane after nearly 1 year of service in a brackish water treatment plant was investigated using optical and electron microscopic methods, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectrometry (ICP-AES). Both the top surface and the cross-section of the fouled membrane were analysed to moni...

Effects of wastewater and mixed liquor characteristics on membrane fouling in both a submerged anaerobic membrane bioreactor and a thermophilic submerged aerobic membrane bioreactor were studied with four types of industrial wastewaters. Significant differences in particle size distribution, colloidal content, the protein to polysaccharide ratio, and soluble compounds molecular weight distribut...

This experimental work investigated the property of membrane fouling for different sludges at high flux 20 L/(m(2)h). The MBR with good aerobic granular sludge performed the longest operation time 61 days, and TMP rose up in a steady overall rate, while only 10, 14 and 19 days for bulking, flocculent and small granular sludge, respectively, which clearly demonstrated the good and complete aerob...

A laboratory-scale membrane bioreactor (MBR) and nanofiltration (NF) hybrid system has been built to investigate effects of changes in characteristics of effluent organic matter by the MBR on fouling characteristics of the NF membranes. Large amounts of polysaccharide-like substances with small molecular weight and strong fluorescence intensity at the excitation wavelength of 230nm and the emis...

Membrane bioreactors (MBRs) are now main stream wastewater treatment technologies. In recent times, novel pressure driven rotating membrane disc modules have been specially developed that induce high shear on the membrane surface, thereby reducing fouling. Previous research has produced dead-end filtration fouling model which combines all three classical mechanisms that was later used by anothe...

Membrane distillation (MD) has emerged as an important technology for applications in industries such as seawater desalination and wastewater treatment due to its low energy requirement and theoretically low fouling propensity. However, the main obstacle to obtain high separating efciency in MD lies on the availability of porous hydrophobic membrane that can withstand p...

Figure 1: Experimental approach. Graft PEG to membrane surface to help reduce fouling of hydrophobic solutes [3]. Desalination can be used as a means to replenish freshwater supplies of communities with growing population needs. Reverse osmosis (RO) is a pressure-driven process that requires a semi-permeable membrane to selectively remove salts and other particulate matter from brackish water o...

This paper aims to broaden a better understanding of extracellular polymeric substances (EPS) and its impact on fouling in membrane bioreactor (MBR). Some fundamental knowledge about EPS and MBR fouling was covered in this paper in several aspects including definition of EPS, evaluation of EPS, influencing factors on EPS production and responsibility of EPS on MBR fouling mechanisms.

Membrane fouling has been regarded as one of the biggest challenges to widespread application of membrane bioreactor (MBR). This study focuses on minimizing the membrane fouling and improving the performance of submerged membrane bioreactor (SMBR) by porous sponge addition. The effects of sponge addition on sustainable flux and membrane fouling were investigated. Acclimatized sponge could signi...

We aimed to investigate the relationship between membrane material and the development of membrane fouling in a membrane bioreactor (MBR) using membranes with different pore sizes and hydrophilicities. Batch filtration tests were performed using submerged single hollow fiber membrane ultrafiltration (UF) modules with different polymeric membrane materials including cellulose acetate (CA), polye...