Filtration of natural and colloidal matter is an essential process in today's water treatment processes. The colloidal matter is retained with the help of micro- and nanoporous synthetic membranes. Colloids are retained in a "cake layer"--often coined fouling layer. Membrane fouling is the most substantial problem in membrane filtration: colloidal and natural matter build-up leads to an increas...

Fouling by natural organic matter like humic substances is one of the major factors limiting the application of microporous membranes for water production. The charge of the pore surface of membrane, which can be characterized by the streaming potential(SP) measurement as the apparent zeta potential ζ obs, has a large effect on its fouling performance. However the relationship between the fouli...

Cross-flow microfiltration (CFMF) was experimentaLLy studied for the separation of precipitates of chromium hydroxide. Although this process enables one to obtain chromium-free filtrate, a disadvantage is that the filtration flux declines rapidly due to membrane fouling. In order to avoid this fouling problem and increase the filtration flux, an electric field was applied across the membrane as...

Dyes fouling of reverse osmosis (RO) membranes and its relation to adsorption had been investigated by using a crossflow RO filtration setup. Methylene blue (MB) and rhodamine B (RB) were used as model organic foulants. The calculated amount of the irreversible sorption was related to the irreversible flux decline. The characteristic fouling kinetics was accounted by Langmuir-Hinshelwood (L-H) ...

nanofiltration (nf) has become a widely accepted process not only for producing drinking water but also for recovering wastewater in industrial processes or removing pollutants from industrial wastewater effluent. in the textile industry, the treatment of various dye baths with nf at room temperature have already been studied and was found feasible at lab-scale and pilot scale. the aim of this ...

Grinded glass fiber (GGF) embedded high density polyethylene (HDPE) membranes were prepared via thermally induced phase separation method. FESEM images showed that all the membranes had leafy structure, indicating a solid-liquid mechanism during phase separation. The results of EDX and TGA analyses confirmed that the fibers were dispersed in the HDPE matrix uniformly. Normalized water flux of t...

The aim of the present work is to enhance the antifouling properties of polypropylene (PP) membrane based on hydrophilicity improvement. Different contents of neat and modified nanodiamond (0.25, 0.50, 0.75 and 1.00 wt.%) were embedded into PP membranes. Nanodiamond nanoparticles were carboxylated by heat treatment method and the presence of carboxyl functional groups on the surface of nanopart...

The effectiveness of poly(vinylpyrrolidone) (PVP)-modification of a zirconia-based ultrafiltration membrane was investigated for the treatment of oil-in-water (o/w) emulsions. Fouling, hydraulic permeability, flux decline, and solute rejection for modified and native membranes were evaluated using a diagnostic o/w emulsion as well as an emulsion prepared using a commercial cutting oil. The nati...

In the present work, the effects of operating conditions including pH, transmembrane pressure, oil concentration, and temperature on fouling resistance and the rejection of turbidity for a polymeric membrane in an ultrafiltration system of wastewater treatment were studied. A new modeling technique called evolutionary polynomial regression (EPR) was investigated. EPR is a method based on regres...

The recent development in oil and gas industry increases the production and consumption of oil. The enormous amount of oily wastewater produced is urged to be treated to prevent humanity and environment from being threatened. Membrane technology is an appealing alternative for oily wastewater treatment due to its design simplicity, energy efficiency and environmentally benign approach. In this ...