• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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• v.18 no.6
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• pp.801-806
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• 2004

The pilot study was conducted to (i) investigate the ability of various membrane integrity monitoring methods to detect changes in membrane integrity during operation, and (ii) determine the impact of membrane damage on microbial removal by microfiltration. Two variations of air pressure hold tests were investigated for direct integrity monitoring: pressure decay (PD) and diffusive air flow (DAF) tests which are most commonly used integrity tests for microfiltration (MF) membranes. Both PD and DAF tests were sensitive enough to detect one damaged fiber out of 66,000 under field operaing conditions. Indirect integrity monitoring such as turbidity and particle counting, however, responded poorly to defects in membrane systems. Microbial challenge study was performed using both new and deliberately damaged membranes, as well as varying the state of fouling of the membrane. This study demonstrated that MF membrane with nominal pore size $0.2{\mu}m$ was capable of removing various pathogens including coliform, spore, and cryptosporidium, at the level required by drinking water regulations, even when high operating pressures were applied. A sharp decrease in average log reduction value (LRV) was observed when one fiber was damaged, emphasizing the importance of membrane integrity in control of microbial contamination.

• Membrane and Water Treatment
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.121-136
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• 2011

A bench-scale test has recently been proposed as a predictive tool to minimize the scope of pilot-scale testing or to optimize the operation of full-scale membrane filtration systems. Consequently, a bench-scale testing unit was developed for this purpose and systematically evaluated in this study. This unit was capable of accommodating commercially available, low pressure, hollow fiber (LPHF) membranes with various configurations for testing under conditions comparable to real-world applications. Reproducibility of this unit in assessing membrane fouling and microbial removal efficiency of LPHF membranes was tested and statistically comparable results were obtained. This unit serves as a useful apparatus for academic researchers and utilities to evaluate the performance of LPHF membranes used for water treatment.

• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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• v.28 no.2
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• pp.171-179
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• 2014

In this study, a novel method was proposed to test the integrity of water treatment system specifically equipped with membrane filtration process. We applied the silica particles coated with a fluorescent agent (rhodamine B isothiocyanate) as a surrogate to detect a membrane process integrity and evaluate the reliability of effluent quality in the system. Additionally, a series of experiments was conducted to evaluate the sensitivity of the method through the laboratory scale experiment. The laboratory scale experiments showed that the feasibility of application of proposed method to detect a breach or damaged part on the membrane surface. However, the sensitivity on predicting the area of a breach was significantly influenced by the testing conditions such as a concentration of surrogate, filtration flux, and detection time. The lowest error of predicting the area of breach was 3.5% at the testing condition of surrogate concentration of 80 mg/L injected with flux of $20L/m^2/hr$ for 10 minutes of detection time for the breach having the actual area of $7.069mm^2$. However, the error of estimation was increased at the small breach with area less than $0.785mm^2$. A future study will be conducted to estimate a damaged area with more accuracy and precision.

• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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• v.30 no.1
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• pp.33-40
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• 2016

In this study, a fluorescent silica nano particle is used as the surrogate for challenging test of membrane surface integrity. The particles are functionalized by a fluorescent dying agent so that as an ultraviolet light is imposed a bright fluorescent image from the particles can be taken. If a membrane surface is damaged and has a compromised part larger than the size of surrogate the fluorescent particles would pass through and contained in the permeate. An operator can directly notice whether the membrane surface is damaged or not by detecting a fluorescent image taken from the permeate. Additionally, the size of compromised part is estimated through analysing the fluorescent image in which we surmise the mass of particles included in the permeate by calculating an average RGB value of the image. The pilot scale experiments showed that this method could be applied successfully to determine if a membrane surface had a damaged parts regardless of the test condition. In the testing on the actual damaged area of $4.712mm^2$, the lowest error of estimating the damaged area was -1.32% with the surrogate concentration of 80 mg/L, flux of $40L/m^2/hr$ for 25 minutes of detection. A further study is still going on to increase the lowest detection limit and thus decrease the error of estimation.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.32 no.8
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• pp.1003-1010
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• 2022

The purpose of this study was to examine the phytochemical compounds and antibacterial activity of Coffea robusta leaf extract (RLE). The results indicated that chlorogenic acid (CGA) is a major component of RLE. The minimum inhibitory concentrations (MICs) of RLE against Staphylococcus aureus, Bacillus subtilis, Escherichia coli, and Salmonella Typhimurium were 6.25, 12.5, 12.5, and 12.5 mg/ml, respectively. RLE effectively damages the bacterial cell membrane integrity, as indicated by the high amounts of proteins and nucleic acids released from the bacteria, and disrupts bacterial cell membrane potential and permeability, as revealed via fluorescence analysis. Cytotoxicity testing showed that RLE is slightly toxic toward HepG2 cells at high concentration but exhibited no toxicity toward Caco2 cells. The results from the present study suggest that RLE has excellent potential applicability as an antimicrobial in the food industry.