• Membrane and Water Treatment
• /
• v.13 no.1
• /
• pp.39-49
• /
• 2022

Seawater desalination is doubtlessly a viable option to supply fresh drinking water. Nevertheless, RO (reverse osmosis) desalination plants in specific areas may be intermittently operated to match the imbalance between water demand and supply. Although a handful of works have been done on other membrane systems, few studies have attempted to mitigate fouling in intermittent RO systems. Accordingly, the objectives of this paper were to examine the effect of the intermittent operation on RO fouling; and to compare four intermittent operation modes including feed solution recirculation, membrane storage in the feed solution, deionized water (DI) recirculation, and membrane storage in DI water. Results showed that intermittent operation reduced RO fouling under several conditions. However, the extents of fouling mitigation were different depending on the feed conditions, foulant types, and membrane lay-up methods. When the feed solution was recirculated during the lay-up, the restoration of the flux was less significant than that by the feed solution feed-up. The use of deionized water during the lay-up was effective to restore flux, especially when the feed solution contains scale-forming salts (CaSO₄) and/or colloidal silica.

• Proceedings of the Membrane Society of Korea Conference
• /
• 1998.09a
• /
• pp.57-85
• /
• 1998

RO System & Membrance Support Technology Membrance Fouling -Colloidal Fouling -Scale Fouling -Biological Fouling -Chemical Fouling

• Membrane Journal
• /
• v.27 no.3
• /
• pp.232-239
• /
• 2017

In this study, the regeneration investigation for waste reverse osmosis membrane filters which were discarded after use for the household water purifiers has been carried out. Sodium hydroxide, sodium bisulfate, and ethylenediamine tetra acetic acid(EDTA). as the chemical cleaning agents were used. And they were in-situ cleaned with the micro-bubble generator as well. The best result was obtained when both 0.1% EDTA and micro-bubbles were used for 30 min cleaning. Thus, when the performance of the brand new RO membrane and restorated RO membrane were compared, the flux, 19.9%, the recovery ratio 45% were enhanced while the salt rejection was reduced for NaCl 100 mg/L solution, in other words, it has been recovered to the original brand new RO membrane filter. Also the removal of pollutants on membrane surface was confirmed in a naked eye through the scanning electron microscopy. Finally, this research has provided the possibility of the re-use of the waste RO membrane filters of household water purifier which were reclaimed or incinerated after use.

• Membrane and Water Treatment
• /
• v.8 no.3
• /
• pp.225-244
• /
• 2017

A novel thin-film nanocomposite (TFN) reverse osmosis (RO)/non-woven fabric (NWF) membrane was prepared by adding zinc oxide (ZnO) nanospheres ($30{\pm}10nm$) during the interfacial polymerization process of m-phenylenediamine (MPD) and trimesoyl chloride (TMC) on self-made polysulfone (PSF) membrane/polyester (PET) non-woven fabric support. The improved performance of TFN RO membrane was verified in terms of water contact angle (WCA), water flux, salt rejection, antifouling properties and chlorine resistance. The results showed that the WCA value of TFN RO surface had a continuous decrease with the increasing of ZnO content in MPD aqueous solution. The water flux of composite TFN RO membranes acquired a remarkable increase with a stable high solute rejection (94.5 %) in $1g{\cdot}L^{-1}$ NaCl aqueous solution under the optimized addition amount of ZnO (1 wt%). The continuous testing of membrane separation performance after the immersion in sodium hypochlorite solution indicated that the introduction of ZnO nanospheres also dramatically enhanced the antifouling properties and the chlorine resistance of composite RO membranes.

• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
• /
• v.24 no.1
• /
• pp.93-101
• /
• 2010

Reverse osmosis (RO) membranes have been widely used for desalination as well as water and wastewater treatment facilities. Cleaning process is important to maintain stable operation as well as prevention of membrane fouling. Purpose of this research is to analyze electrostatistic and chemical characteristics after cleaning of RO membrane against $SiO_2$ scale. Four RO membranes of polyamide are used and examined about effect of chemical cleaning. EDTA (ethylene diamine tetraacetic acid) and SDS (sodium dodecil sulfate) and NaOH are applied for cleaning process after operation in synthetic water. Then, cleaning was performed with chemicals such concentration as 6hr, 12hr and 24hr, respectively. As a result, transmittances of FT-IR of four membranes are compared at each cleaning concentration. Ta/Tv shows difference of chemical composition between new membrane and cleaning membrane after cleaning. Type B of RO membrane is turned out to be most vulnerable to cleaning among four membranes. In terms of zeta potential, new membrane has -16 mV to +6 mV on pH while scaled membrane has -18 mV to 2 mV. However, it changed -23mV to 0.9 mV after cleaning. In comparison with existing salt rejection of RO membranes after cleaning, the rejection of the membranes goes down 0.7% maximum. Though cleaning changes the characteristics of membrane surface, it does not greatly affect salt rejection. pH is a critical factor to flux change in PA (polyamide) membrane.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
• /
• v.11 no.4
• /
• pp.1391-1398
• /
• 2010

Reuse feasibility of MBR effluent of S Electronic Company's organic wastewater as a LCD process water was investigated by a $32m^3/d$ pilot-scale RO membrane process. The effects of operating pressure and permeate flux at constant 85% recovery of RO membrane process using MBR effluent were analyzed for transmembrane pressure and period for CIP by membrane fouling as well as rejection of TOC and conductivity. MBR effluent requires additional treatment to meet the LCD process water quality criteria of TOC<1 mg/L and conductivity<$100{\mu}S/cm$ which is stringent as compared with those of conventional reuse water quality criteria. The RO process operated at 85% recovery with stepwise increasing of permeate fluxes from 12.5 LMH to 22.0 LMH was able to meet LCD process water quality criteria. However, the transmembrane pressure increased and the period of CIP decreased as increasing permeability fluxes due to fouling of RO membrane. The optimum operational conditions of RO membrane process were permeate fluxes of 16.5~18.5 LMH with operating pressure of $6.7{\sim}12.4kgf/cm^2$ and CIP period of 20~25 days at constant 85% recovery.

• Environmental Engineering Research
• /
• v.21 no.1
• /
• pp.45-51
• /
• 2016

Membrane bioreactor (MBR) and reverse osmosis (RO) membrane system was applied to the treatment and reclamation of textile wastewater in Thailand. An experiment was carried out to determine the fouling behavior and effect of anti-scalant and biocide addition to flux decline and its recovery through chemical cleaning. The RO unit was operated for one month after which the fouled membranes were cleaned by sequential chemical cleaning method. RO flux was found rapidly declined during initial period and only slightly decreased further in long-term operation. The main foulants were organic compounds and thus sequential cleaning using alkaline solution followed by acid solution was found to be the most effective method. The provision of anti-scalant and biocide in feed-water could not prevent deposition of foulant on the membrane surface but helped improving the membrane cleaning efficiencies.

• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
• /
• v.21 no.4
• /
• pp.477-483
• /
• 2007

A coagulation process for RO (reverse osmosis) membrane pretreatment system was an effective technology to remove colloidal and particulate matters. However, coagulant residuals from the pretreatment process may negatively affect RO membrane performance. The bench-scale coagulant exposure study was performed to investigate the effect of their residual on adsorbed mass which related to the membrane performance. Coagulant addition in this study ranged from 0 to 5mg/L ferric chloride, alum, and 2mg/L cationic polymer(poly-di-methyldiallyl ammonium chloride) as coagulant aids. This results showed that adsorbed mass is not significantly increased during short-time period, however, accumulated mass of coagulants on the membrane surface is significantly increased during long-time experimental period. The effect of pH on coagulants adsorption characteristics was significantly differed due to the electrostatic repulsive interactions between soluble coagulants and membrane surface charge. This data suggest that the RO membrane performance of drinking water treatment plant could be decreased by adsorption of residual coagulants when applied for the coagulant pretreatment process.

• Membrane and Water Treatment
• /
• v.5 no.3
• /
• pp.171-182
• /
• 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
• /
• 2004.05a
• /
• pp.25-28
• /
• 2004

In recent years, membranes have become fully or partially integrated into all facilities that produce drinking water since membrane processes can resolve technically complex and, at times, conflicting requirements related to compliance with multi-contaminant regulations. However, NF or RO technologies are hydraulically limited by the feed water quality that causes the fouling in a membrane system. In particular, NF or RO systems involved in surface water treatment generally require extensive pretreatment for controlling membrane fouling.(omitted)