As a reaction to the increasing noise pollution, caused by the expansion of airports close to residential areas, porous trailing edges are investigated to reduce the aeroacoustic noise produced by flow around the airframe. Besides mechanical and acoustical investigations of porous materials, the fouling behavior of promising materials is an important aspect to estimate the performance in long-t...

Advanced wastewater treatment using membranes are popular environmental system processes since they allow reuse and recycling. However, fouling is a key limiting factor and so proprietary systems such as Avanti's RPU-185 Flexidisks membrane bioreactor (MBR) use novel rotating membranes to assist in ameliorating it. In earlier research, this rotating process was studied by creating a simulation ...

Ultrafiltration (UF) fouling has been attributed to concentration polarization, gel layer formation as well as outer and inner membrane pore clogging. It is believed that mass of humic materials either retained on membrane surface or associated with membrane inner pore surface is the primary cause for permeate flux decline and filtration resistance build-up in water supply industries. While bio...

The new attached growth sponge tray bioreactor (STB) was evaluated at different operating conditions for removing organics and nutrients from primary treated sewage effluent. This STB was also assessed when using as a pre-treatment prior to micro-filtration (MF) for reducing membrane fouling. At a short hydraulic retention time (HRT) of 40 min, the STB could remove up to 92% of DOC and 40-56% o...

Trimethylene glycol dimethyl ether (triglyme), a Polyethylene glycol (PEG)-like hydrophilic polymer, was deposited by plasma polymerization to reduce RO membrane’s organic fouling tendency. This method has the great advantage of achieving modification in one single step. A series of plasma deposition experiments were undertaken. The successful coating of the polymer was confirmed by X-ray photo...

The present study investigates major organic foulants in ultrafiltration (UF) of treated domestic wastewater and their removal in slow sand filtration. Identification and quantification of major foulants was conducted in labscale experiments. Quantified results suggest that biopolymers (large molecular protein-like and polysaccharidelike materials) are major organic foulants in UF. This conclus...

The literature on chemical cleaning of polymeric hollow fibre ultrafiltration and microfiltration membranes used in the filtration of water for municipal water supply is reviewed. The review considers the chemical cleaning mechanism, and the perceived link between this and membrane fouling by natural organic matter (NOM) – the principal foulant in municipal potable water applications. Existing ...

Four commercially available membrane bioreactor (MBR) systems were operated at the pilot scale, to investigate performance during the reclamation of municipal wastewater. The MBR performance was evaluated under a variety of operating conditions, including two types of feed wastewater (raw and advanced primary effluent), hydraulic retention times (HRTs) ranging from 2 to 6 hours, and permeate fl...

Increasingly stringent regulations for drinking water quality have stimulated the application of ultrafiltration to water treatment. In addition to removing particulate materials from water (including microorganisms, bacteria and viruses), the use of membrane treatment also meets purification requirements. However, irreversible fouling curtails the economic viability of such a process. Experime...

Adsorption of organic foulants on nanofiltration (NF) and reverse osmosis (RO) membrane surfaces strongly affects subsequent fouling behavior by modifying the membrane surface. In this study, impact on organic foulant adsorption of specific chemistries including those in commercial thin-film composite membranes was investigated using self-assembled monolayers with seven different ending chemica...