Combined Precipitative and Colloidal Fouling of Reverse Osmosis Membranes
Publication: Journal of Environmental Engineering
Volume 145, Issue 8
Abstract
Reverse osmosis experiments with synthetic feed waters were carried out to simulate combined fouling of salt-rejecting membranes by colloids and scale. Two gypsum crystallization regimes were studied: (1) surface crystallization with the saturation index smaller than 1 in the bulk and higher than 1 near the membrane surface and (2) concomitant surface and bulk crystallization with supersaturated solutions. Rapid flux decline was observed for both undersaturated and supersaturated feeds. For the supersaturated feed, scaling resulted in a dramatic flux decline only marginally affected by colloids. For the undersaturated feed, the flux decline was significantly higher than the summation of flux declines due to colloidal fouling alone and gypsum scaling alone. Colloidal silica did not have a statistically significant effect on the amount of gypsum crystals formed on membrane, whereas the deposition of colloids was enhanced in the presence of scale. The synergistic increase in fouling is attributed to changes in the structure of the fouling layer. The results point to the importance of removing colloidal species at the pretreatment stage.
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Acknowledgments
The presented work was funded in part by the National Water Research Institute (Project No. 05-TM-007) and in part by the National Science Foundation Partnerships for International Research and Education program under Grant IIA-1243433. We thank Dow-FilmTec for providing membrane samples and Nissan Chemical America for supplying the silica suspension. We are also grateful to Dr. Ewa Danielewicz and Dr. Alicia Withrow from the Center for Advanced Microscopy at Michigan State University for their assistance with the cross-section sample preparation and EDS analysis.
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Published In
Journal of Environmental Engineering
Volume 145 • Issue 8 • August 2019
Copyright
©2019 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Mar 5, 2018
Accepted: Dec 5, 2018
Published online: May 25, 2019
Published in print: Aug 1, 2019
Discussion open until: Oct 25, 2019
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