• Membrane Journal
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.93-98
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• 2007

The reliability of innovative membrane contactors technology (i.e. Gas/Liquid Membrane Contactors, Membrane Distillation/Crystallization) is today increasing for seawater desalination processes, where traditional pressure-driven membrane separation units are routinely operated. Furthermore, conventional membrane operations can be integrated with membrane contactors in order to promote possible improvements in process efficiency, operational stability, environmental impact, water quality and cost. Seawater is the most abundant aqueous solution on the earth: the amount of dissolved salts covers about 3% of its composition, and six elements (Na, Mg, Ca, K, Cl, S) account for more than 90% of ionic species. Recent investigations on Membrane Distillation-Crystallization have shown the possibility to achieve significant overall water recovery factors, to limit the brine disposal problem, and to recover valuable salts (i.e. calcium sulphate, sodium chloride, magnesium sulphate) by combining this technology with conventional RO trains. In this work, the kinetics of $CaSO_4{\cdot}2H_2O,\;NaCl\;and\;MgSO_4{\cdot}7H_2O$ crystallization is experimentally investigated in order to improve the design of the membrane-based crystallization unit.

• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.285-291
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• 2011

Membrane fouling is an unavoidable phenomenon and major obstacle in the economic and efficient operation under sea water reverse osmosis (SWRO). When fouling occurs on the membrane surface, the permeate quantity and quality decrease, the trans-membrane pressure (TMP) and operation costs increase, and the membrane may be damaged. Therefore, chemical cleaning process is important to prevent permeate flow from decreasing in RO membrane filtration process. This study focused on proper chemical cleaning condition for Shuaibah RO plant in Saudi Arabia. Several chemical agents were used for chemical cleaning at different contact time and concentrations of chemicals. Also autopsy analysis was performed using LOI, FT-IR, FEEM, SEM and EDX for assessment of fouling. Specially, FEEM analysis method was thought as analyzing and evaluating tool available for selection of the first applied chemical cleaning dose to predict potential organic fouling. Also, cleaning time should be considered by the condition of RO membrane process since the cleaning time depends on the membrane fouling rate. If the fouling exceeds chemical cleaning guideline, to perfectly remove the fouling, certainly, the chemical cleaning is increased with membrane fouling rate influenced by raw water properties, pre-treatment condition and the point of the chemical cleaning operation time. Also choice of cleaning chemicals applied firstly is important.

• Membrane and Water Treatment
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• v.5 no.4
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• pp.235-250
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• 2014

The impacts of membrane degradation due to chlorine attack on the rejection of inorganic salts and trace organic contaminants by nanofiltration (NF) and reverse osmosis (RO) membranes were investigated in this study. The rejection of trace contaminants was examined at environmentally relevant concentrations. Changes in the membrane surface morphology were observed as a result of chlorine exposure. A small increase in rejection was consistently observed with all four membranes selected in this study after being exposed to a low concentration of hypochlorite (100 ppm). In contrast, a higher concentration of hypochlorite (i.e., 2000 ppm) could be detrimental to the membrane separation capacity. Membranes with severe chlorine impact showed a considerable decrease in rejection over filtration time, possibly due to rearrangement of the polyamide chains under the influence of chlorine degradation and filtration pressure. The reported results indicate that loose NF membranes are more sensitive to chlorine exposure than RO membranes. The impact of hypochlorite exposure (both positive and negative) on rejection is dependent on the strength of the hypochlorite solution and is more significant for the neutral carbamazepine compound than the negatively charged sulfamethoxazole.

• Membrane Journal
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.1-6
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• 2008

After membrane fouling factors in acrylic wastewater were minimized by pretreatment process accompanied with coagulation-filtration-neutralization, it was utilized in UF/RO process. After composing of ultrafiltration and reverse osmosis module set according to types and kinds of membrane, the separation characteristics were examined with the variation temperature and pressure using pretreated acrylic wastewater by membrane module sets. It was found that permeate flux of UF module in module set 4 was about two${\sim}$three times larger than that of UF module in module set 1. Final quantity of permeate from the module set 2 and module set 3 combined with tubular module was shown very good result. It was shown that the removal efficiency of TDS, T-N and COD was very low and was not dependent on the variation of temperature and pressure in all UF modules. The removal efficiency of TDS, T-N and COD was very excellent in RO module. Final water quality of acrylic wastewater was satisfied with effluent allowances limit and membrane module sets were ascertained to reuse wastewater.

• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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• v.30 no.3
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• pp.279-284
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• 2016

Membrane distillation (MD) is the thermally driven water separation process based on the vapor pressure difference across the membrane. In order to increase the water recovery of the conventional RO process, the additional MD-PRO pocess was suggested. In this study, the syntheric RO brine was used as a feed solution of the MD process. Due to the high salinity of the RO brine, the MD membrane could be fouled by the scalants. In order to mitigate the scaling on the MD membrane surface, the pre-treatment process using the column filled by natural zeolite was applied. The roughing filter was installed between the pre-treatment process and MD system in order to prevent possible particulate fouling by the debries of the natural zeolite. Moreover, in order to enhance the CEC of the natural zeolite, the NaCl soaking was conducted. The flux and electronic conductivity were monitored under given experimental conditions. And the membrane morphology and the chemical compositions were analyzed by using the SEM-EDX.

• Membrane Journal
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.317-324
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• 2014

It is very well known that the conventional polyamide (PA) thin film composite (TFC) reverse osmosis (RO) membranes have excellent permselective properties, but their chlorine tolerance is not good enough. In this study, to improve such chlorine tolerance, microporous membranes containing hydrophilic functional groups such as -COOH were used as a support to prepare PA TFC RO membranes, employing the conventional interfacial polymerization method. Meta-phenylene diamine (MPD) and 2,6-diamine toluene (2,6-DAT) were used as diamine monomers and tri-mesoyl chloride (TMC) as an acid monomer. The membranes prepared were characterized using various instrumental analytical methods and permeation test set-up. The flux obtained from the membranes prepared so was more than $1.0m^3/m^2day$ at 800 psi of operating pressure, while the salt rejection was over 99.0%. The chlorine tolerance of them was also found to be better than that of the membrane prepared by using conventional polysulfone support without hydrophilic functional groups.

• Membrane and Water Treatment
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• v.3 no.2
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• pp.99-111
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• 2012

The performance of ultrafiltration (UF) membranes with molecular weight cut off (MWCO) of 1000 and 3500 Da in clarifying sugar cane juice was investigated, as well as the performance of a nanofiltration (NF) membrane with MWCO of 200 Da and a reverse osmosis (RO) membrane in concentrating sugar cane juice. For both cases the sugar cane juice had been limed and partially clarified. The UF membranes were found to be effective at clarifying the sugar cane juice in terms of purity rise and reduction in turbidity, colour, starch and protein. A purity rise of approximately 6 was achieved by both UF membranes at trans-membrane pressures (TMP) from 15 to 25 bar. However, Brix reduction in the permeate was between 14.5 and 41.85% and 12.11 and 26.52% for 1000 Da and 3500 Da membranes respectively. For the 200 Da and RO membranes the Brix in the concentrate was increased from 7.65 to 12.3 after 3 hours of operation for the 200 Da membrane at a TMP of 10 bar, whilst the Brix in the concentrate was increased from 15.65 to 27.6 after 3 hours of operation for the RO membrane at a TMP of 35 bar. Overall, UF membranes were found to be unsuitable for clarification of sugar cane juice since significant amount of Brix is reduced in the permeate, whilst RO membranes were found to be effective for concentration of sugar cane juice.

• Membrane Journal
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• v.31 no.5
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• pp.315-326
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• 2021

Lithium ion battery (LIB) demands increase every year globally to reduce the burden on fossil fuels. LIBs are used in electric vehicles, stationary storage systems and various other applications. Lithium is available in seawater, salt lakes, and brines and its extraction using environmentally friendly and inexpensive methods will greatly relieve the pressure in lithium mining. Membrane separation processes, mainly nanofiltration (NF), is an effective way for the separation of lithium metal from solutions. Electrodialysis and electrolysis are other separation processes used for lithium separation. The process of reverse osmosis (RO) is already a well-established method for the desalination of seawater; therefore, modifying RO membranes to target lithium metals is an excellent alternative method in which the only bottleneck is the interfering presence of other metal elements in the solution. Selectively removing lithium by finding or developing suitable NF membranes can be challenging, but it is nonetheless an exciting area of research. This review discusses in detail about lithium recovery via nanofiltration, electrodialysis, electrolysis and other processes.

• Membrane Journal
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.332-342
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• 2015

In this study, to solve the major problem of reverse osmosis (RO) membrane, surface of reverse osmosis membrane was modified by silane-epoxy multi layer. Octyltrimethoxysilane (OcTES) was polymerized to membrane surface via cross-linking by Sol-gel method. n = 8 alkylgroup of OcTES formed the branch structure by self assembly. And for improve fouling resistance of RO membrane, Ether group of ethylene glycol diglycidyl ether (EGDE) was given to improve hydrophilicity of RO membrane surface by ring-opening. To analyze structure of RO membrane surface with FE-TEM and AFM. Membrane surface of the ridge and valley structure and the bridge structure was confirmed due to the multi-layer surface modification of OcTES and EGDE. And through the increase of the roughness, the branch structure was formed well on membrane surface. Through the XPS analysis was identified chemical structure of membrane surface. And confirmed that the hydrophilic surface modification is given to the surface of the film through a Contact angle analysis. In optimization of EGDE surface modification condition, was suitable 0.5 wt% EGDE concentraion and $70^{\circ}C$ ring-opening temperature. In result of fouling resistance test and MFI is SUL-H10, $PA-OcTES_{1.0}$, $PA-OcTES_{1.0}-EGDE_{0.5}$ 68.7, 60.4, 5.4 ($10E-8hr/mL^2$), multi-layer surface modified membrane improved fouling resistance.

• Proceedings of the Membrane Society of Korea Conference
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• 2003.11a
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• pp.223-225
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• 2003