• Membrane and Water Treatment
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• v.5 no.3
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• pp.171-182
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• 2014

Organic compounds are adsorbed on RO/NF membranes, and the adsorption may influence the rejection of organic compounds by the membranes. Because almost RO/NF membranes are composite membranes, the results obtained by adsorption experiment with using membrane pieces are unable to avoid the influence by the support membrane. In this work, the interaction between membrane polymer and organic solutes was examined by an inverse HPLC methodology. Poly (m-phenylenetrimesoylate), the constituent of skin layer of RO/NF membranes, was coated on silica gel particles and used as a stationary phase for HPLC. When water was used as a mobile phase, almost hydrophilic aliphatic compounds were not effectively adsorbed on the stationary phase, although hydrophobic compounds were slightly adsorbed. The results indicated that the hydrophilic aliphatic compounds are useful probe solutes to examine the molecular sieving effect of a membrane. When water was used as a mobile phase, the aromatic compounds were strongly retained, and therefore $CH_3CN/H_2O$ (30/70) was used as a mobile phase. It was revealed that the adsorption of aromatic compounds was controlled by stacking between solute and polymer and was hindered by non-planar structure and substituents.

• Proceedings of the Membrane Society of Korea Conference
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• 2000.07a
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• pp.1-38
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• 2000

• Membrane Journal
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.37-43
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• 2004

As the experimental results of membrane application for the production and recovery of volatile fatty acids, suspended solids concentration, the number of acid producing bacteria and organic acid concentration increased with membrane coupling in the fermenter. The application of membrane for the efficiency increase of solid-liquid separation and fermentation made the number of acid producing bacteria increase in the fermenter, thus acid forming rate showed higher value than that of membrane-free fermenter. Membrane-coupled fermenter was believed to be an effective technology for the improvement of recovery efficiency of volatile fatty acids from organic sludge.

• Membrane Journal
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.51-62
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• 1999

The recovery of trace volatile organic components from water by pervaporation was investigated. Permeation experiments through homogeneous polydimethylsiloxane(PDMS) membrane was carried out and the effect of feed concentrations and membrane thicknesses on the permeation characteristics were investigated. A solution-diffusion model is used to describe the pervaporation transport mechanism. In homogeneous PDMS membrane it appeared that the selectivities of MEK and toluene are constant, and that organic flux has a linear relationship with feed concentration. These results indicate that the coupling effects between organics were negligible. The selectivity of PDMS membranes is invariant with respect to the membrane thickness. The intrinsic membrane permeability of organic components determined by using a solution-diffusion model. Comparing with various composite type membrane, the membrane using PEG treated nonwoven fabric as sublayer showed the best performance in VOC recovery by pervaporation.

• Biotechnology and Bioprocess Engineering:BBE
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.147-150
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• 2004

Permeabilization is known to overcome cell membrane barriers of whole cell biocatalysts. The use of organic solvents is advantageous in terms of cost, simplicity, and efficiency. In this study, Ochrobactrum anthropi SY509 was permeabilized with various organic solvents. Treatment with organic solvents resulted in lower permeability barriers due to falling out lipids of the cell membrane. Therefore, permeabilized cells showed higher enzyme activity with no cell viability. Among various organic solvents, 0.5% (v/v) chloroform was selected as the most efficient permeabilizing reagent. Changes in the cell membrane structure were observe d and the residual amounts of phospholipids of the cell membrane were measured to investigate the mechanism of the improved permeability.

• Membrane and Water Treatment
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.1-10
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• 2016

Ultrafiltration is known to be one of the most commonly applied techniques in water treatment. Membrane fouling is the main limiting factor in terms of process efficiency and restricting it to the manageable degree is crucial. Natural organic matter is often found to be a major foulant in surface waters. Among many known fouling prevention techniques, the membrane chemical cleaning is widely employed. This study focuses on evaluating the cleaning efficiency of polymeric and ceramic membranes with the use of various chemicals. The influence of cleaning agent type and its concentration, membrane material and its MWCO, and cleaning process duration on the recovery of membrane flux was analyzed. Results have shown that, regardless of membrane type and MWCO, the most effective cleaning agent was NaOH.

• Journal of Korean Society on Water Environment
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• v.28 no.1
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• pp.148-156
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• 2012

In this research, the application of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) modified PVDF (polyvinylidene fluoride) membrane was tested as a simply and beginning attempt to overcome membrane fouling because CNTs importantly affect the transport of natural organic matter (NOM). Suwannee River fulvic acid (SRFA) as the representative of NOM was selected and its sorption results with single-walled CNT (SWCNT), multi-walled CNT (MWCNT), and oxidized MWCNT (O-MWCNT) were obtained through the batch experiment. SRFA sorption isotherms had a strong nonlinearity and its sorption capacity followed the order O-MWCNT < MWCNT < SWCNT. The adsorbed mass of SRFA on each CNT decreased as a function of pH due to their charge repulsion. For the CNT-PVDF membrane filtration experiments, the suspended CNT solution (10 mg/40 mL) was incorporated into $0.45{\mu}m$-PVDF membrane and 5 mg/L of SRFA solution was monitored using UV detector connected with high pressure pump after passing through CNT-PVDF membrane. The SRFA removal efficiency by MWCNT-PVDF membrane was the strongest among other modified membranes. This suggests that the CNT modified microfiltration (MF) membrane might effectively and selectively apply to treat the contaminated water including organic compounds in the presence of NOM.

• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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• v.30 no.3
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• pp.327-334
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• 2016

The effects of dissolved inorganic and organic matter in seawater and the characteristics of fouling on the membrane surface were investigated within membrane distillation (MD) process. The changes of the membrane flux of PE and PVDF hollow fiber membranes under natural and synthetic seawater were compared with given variances of temperature. The flux of both membranes under the synthetic seawater, without any organic matter, were higher than that of the natural seawater, indicating the organic fouling on the membrane surface. The surface of the membrane was analyzed using scanning electron microscope (SEM) to examine the fouling. The experiment with organics has shown the formation of thin film over the membrane surface, while the experiment with inorganics has shown only the formation of inorganic crystals. The results indicated the organic matter as the major foulants and that the organics affected the formation of the crystals. Permeate water conductivity of all conditions verified the quality of the water to be better if not similar to that of RO.

• Journal of Korean Society of Environmental Engineers
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• v.27 no.7
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• pp.753-761
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• 2005

In this study, pretreatment of organic matters with $MIEX^{(R)}$ was evaluated using bench-scale experimental procedures on four organic matters to determine its effect on subsequent UF membrane filtration. For comparison, coagulation process was also used as a pretreatment of UF membrane filtration. Moreover, the membrane fouling potential was identified using different fractions and molecular weights of organic matters. From the removal property of MW organic matters by coagulation process for the sample water NOM and AOM, the removal efficiency of high MW organic matters were much higher than those of low MW organic matters. It was shown that the removal efficiency of high MW organic matter more than 10 kDa was lower than that of low MW organic matter for $MIEX^{(R)}$ process. For the change of permeate flux by the pretreatment process, $MIEX^{(R)}$+UF process showed high removal efficiency of organic matter as compared with coagulation-UF processes, but high reduction rate of permeate flux was presented through the reduction of removal efficiency of high MW organic matter. From sequential filtration test results in order to examine the effect of MW of organic matter on membrane fouling, it was found that the membrane foulant was occurred by high MW organic matter, and the DOC of organic matter less than 0.5 mg/L was working as the membrane foulant. In the case of sample water composed of low MW organic matter less than 10 kDa, since the low MW organic matter less than 10 kDa has high removal efficiency by $MIEX^{(R)}$, low reduction rate of permeate flux is obtained as compared with coagulation-UF processes. In summary, it is required to conduct the research on physical/chemical characteristic of original water before pretreatment process of membrane process is selected, and a pertinent pre-treatment process should be employed based on the physical/chemical characteristic of original water.

• Membrane Journal
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.104-107
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• 2017

Among many methods in solving the organic contamination in the reverse osmosis operation, caustic soda (NaOH) wash method is efficient and commercially affordable. In continuation of our many organic pollution removal works, this study focused mainly on caustic soda wash with micro-bubble to removal the organic contamination of the spent membrane from reverse osmosis process. First, the membrane was forced the pollute using known organic pollutants such as Humic acid, Bovine serum albumin, Sodium alginate drug. The organic contamination on the membrane was monitored flux. The decontamination of organic contaminants was derived flux variation at individual caustic soda was injected micro-bubble methods and combined method as well. the found results explain removal of organic contaminants effective only by combined caustic soda wash with micro-bubble methods.