The use of modern high flux reverse osmosis membranes with low salinity feeds at high recovery rates, makes the measurement of fouling by flux decline difficult in practice. Early detection of fouling is important, because the onset of fouling occurs at a critical flux which is difficult to predict a priori. An alternative method, measuring the electrical properties of the membrane is proposed ...

Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) with different physiochemical properties were layered onto low pressure membranes and tested for antifouling properties using a natural surface water with high fouling potential. Membranes modified with the largest diameter pristine multi-walled CNTs (MWCNTs) were most effective in controlling membrane fouling, tripling the time it took for the membrane to become noticea...

One of the key issues in membrane technology is to avoid fouling which is formed on the membrane surface. To get over this trouble, the use of a patterned surface was suggested as a way to reduce fouling. In this report, both the experimental and numerical studies were performed with a prism patterned membrane system. In our experiments, we observe the local distribution of microbials; more fou...

The goal of this study is to investigate the effect of inoculating granules on reducing membrane fouling. In order to evaluate the differences in performance between flocculent sludge and aerobic granular sludge in membrane reactors (MBRs), two reactors were run in parallel and various parameters related to membrane fouling were measured. The results indicated that specific resistance to the fo...

The mechanisms regarding the influence of dissolved organics in papermaking whitewater together with metal ions on the fouling of an ultrafiltration (UF) membrane were studied in this paper. A series of experiments were carried out to characterize the organic matters’ size and membrane flux. The associated fouling mechanism was investigated using the modified Hermia empirical model, resistance ...

The aim of this study was to evaluate the changes in membrane surface properties and solute separation by a nanofiltration membrane during repetitive membrane fouling and chemical cleaning. Secondary treated effluent and model fouling solutions containing humic acids, sodium alginate, or silica colloids were used to simulate membrane fouling. Chemical cleaning was carried out using a commercial...

Blooms of blue-green algae such as Microcystis aeruginosa in aquatic systems can result in substantial algal organic matter (AOM) entering downstream water treatment facilities. It has been demonstrated in a number of recent studies that AOM can cause severe fouling of low pressure membrane filtration systems [1, 2]. In this work the distribution of the foulant on a ceramic microfiltration memb...

In this work we aim to show that the overall surface potential is a key factor to understand and predict anti-fouling characteristics of a polymer membrane. Therefore, polyvinylidene fluoride membranes were modified by electron beam-induced grafting reactions forming neutral, acidic, alkaline or zwitterionic structures on the membrane surface. The differently charged membranes were investigated...

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...

The fouling behavior of the hollow fiber ultrafiltration (UF) membrane by the mixtures of dissolved organic matters (DOMs) has been systematically investigated. The organic foulants included humic acid (HA), bovine serum albumin (BSA) and sodium alginate (SA), which represented humic substances, proteins and polysaccharides, respectively. According to the experimental results, the filtration pr...