Evaluation of Apparatus for Membrane Cleaning Tests
Publication: Journal of Environmental Engineering
Volume 136, Issue 10
Abstract
Membrane cleaning is critical to the operation of membrane processes. This paper studies the impact of using four different types of bench-scale membrane systems to assess the effectiveness of different cleaning steps after the filtration of colored river water. The systems are a stirred ultrafiltration (UF) cell, a SEPA cell, a small cross-flow (CF) cell, and a six-CF-cell-in-parallel system. The effect of cleaning frequency was also investigated. The comparison was implemented in terms of flux recovery, solute removal, solute resistance removal, and changes of contact angles. The stirred UF cell was only reliable and comparable in terms of flux and flux recovery results. The six-cell-in-parallel system requires further development due to their much lower flux. For cleaning at 30-min intervals, the cleaning efficiency of membranes was similar for the three CF systems. For cleaning intervals of 2 and 4 h did not statistically affect the flux recovery for the stirred UF cell and SEPA cell. There was some irreversible fouling that could not be restored completely by clean-in-place method even with rigorous chemical treatment.
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Acknowledgments
The writers gratefully acknowledge Vietnam Government (Vietnamese Overseas Scholarship Programs-VOSP), Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), and University of Ottawa for their financial support. We would like to thank GE Osmonics for the provision of membranes. We also express gratitude to Britannia Water Purification Plant for the water sampling, Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, University of Ottawa, for the access to laboratory equipment.NSERC
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Environmental Engineering
Volume 136 • Issue 10 • October 2010
Pages: 1161 - 1170
Copyright
© 2010 ASCE.
History
Received: Jan 30, 2009
Accepted: Apr 9, 2010
Published online: Sep 15, 2010
Published in print: Oct 2010
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