The positive chemotactic responses of motile marine bacteria were reversed by the addition of sublethal concentrations of a toxic chemical. The negative chemotactic effect was observed with a wide range of toxicants including heavy metals and hydrocarbons. This phenomenon may be utilized to develop new approaches for control of marine fouling.

Development of membranes technologies led industrials and researchers to focus on the way to optimize filtration processes in terms of quality and costs of production. In this way, this paper presents a study about determination of low fouling operating conditions in dead-end ultrafiltration of natural organic matter which leads to the definition of sustainable conditions for filtration by limi...

Burning coal in power plants produces significant amounts of deposits like fouling and slagging on boiler surfaces which contributes to the overall poor performance of the power plants (by reducing electricity generation capacity, decreasing boiler efficiency and increasing overall maintenance cost). Recent research and development on boiler fouling and slagging problems, with the current preve...

Biofouling is a serious problem in marine aquaculture and it has a number of negative impacts including increased forces on aquaculture structures and reduced water exchange across nets. This in turn affects the behavior of fish cages in waves and currents and has an impact on the water volume and quality inside net pens. Even though these negative effects are acknowledged by the research commu...

A membrane bioreactor (MBR) and an activated sludge process (ASP) were operated side by side to evaluate the change of sludge supernatant characteristics and the evolution of the sludge fouling propensity. The MBR sludge had a higher organic concentration and more biopolymer clusters (BPC) in the supernatant compared with ASP. BPC increased in both concentration and size in the MBR. The results...

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 fouling precludes the widespread application of membrane filtration system from treating wastewater and drinking water, and occurs even under sub-critical flux operations. Hence the characteristics and behavior of membrane foulants should be thoroughly investigated, so as to find ways to reduce membrane fouling in membrane bioreactors. The purpose of this study is to compare the membra...

Using laboratory assays, we tested whether the secondary metabolites (furanones) on the surface of the red alga Delisea pulchra deter the settlement and growth of a range of ecologically relevant fouling organisms. D. pulchra and 4 other co-occurring seaweeds were almost exclusively fouled by other algae. Consequently, we carried out laboratory assays using propagules from 4 fouling algae (Ulva...

Seasonal variations in the fouling diatom community from a monsoon influenced tropical estuary were investigated. The community composition did not differ significantly between stainless steel and polystyrene substrata due to dominance by Navicula spp. The experimental evidence suggests that Amphora, which is a dominant fouling diatom in temperate waters, ultimately dominates the community in t...

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...