• Journal of Korean Society on Water Environment
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• v.22 no.5
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• pp.926-932
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• 2006

A series of bench-scale membrane filtration experiments were performed to systematically investigate the removal mechanisms of reverse osmosis (RO) and nanofiltration (NF) membranes for BTEX (benzene, toluene, ethylene, xylene), trichloroethylene (TCE) and tetrachloroethylene (PCE). The molecular weight of these organic compounds ranged from 78 to 166 dalton. The rejection of organic compounds by RO/NF membranes varied significantly from 59.6 to 99.2% depending on solute and membrane types. Specifically, experimental results demonstrated that the removal efficiency of RO/NF membranes increased as solute molecular characteristics such as W/L (molecular width/length) ${\times}$ $M_W$ (molecular weight) and octanol-water partition coefficient increased. This observation suggested that the rejection of small organic compounds by RO/NF membranes was determined by the combined effect of physical (molecular size and shape) and chemical (hydrophobicity) properties.

• Journal of the Korean Ceramic Society
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.59-65
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• 1988

To develop porous glass membranes used for a effective membrane-separation process, porous glasses and glass membranes were prepared from the sodium borosilicate parent glass by the phaseseparation technique and effects of heat-treatment and leaching conditions on their characteristics were investigated. The crack-free glass membranes could be fabricated from the 9.4 Na2-O-30.7 B2O3-59.2 SiO2-0.7 Al2O3(wt%) parent glass by heat-treatment at the lower temperature(550-570$^{\circ}C$) and for longer than 45 hrs for the phase separation, followed by leaching with 3N-HCl＋60% ethylene glycol solution at 90$^{\circ}C$ over 25 hrs. Porous glasses prepared in this work showed large specific surface areas(400㎡/g) and narrow pore size distribution with the mean pore radius of 14${\AA}$ enough for the application as reverse osmosis membranes. The salt-rejection efficiency and product-flux of the glass membranes heat-treated at 570$^{\circ}C$ for 80 hrs were found to be 51.8% and 270cc/㎡. hr, respectively. This result suggests that the porous glass membranes fabricated in this study could be applied for the reverse osmosis process.

• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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• v.33 no.6
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• pp.413-420
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• 2019

Pretreatment system of desalination process using seawater reverse osmosis(SWRO) membrane is the most critical step in order to prevent membrane fouling. One of the methods is coagulation-UF membrane process. Coagulation-UF membrane systems have been shown to be very efficient in removing turbidity and non-soluble and colloidal organics contained in the source water for SWRO pretreatment. Ferric salt coagulants are commonly applied in coagulation-UF process for pretreatment of SWRO process. But aluminum salts have not been applied in coagulation-UF pretreatment of SWRO process due to the SWRO membrane fouling by residual aluminum. This study was carried out to see the effect of residual matal salt on SWRO membrane followed by coagulation-UF pretreatment process. Experimental results showed that increased residual aluminum salts by coagulation-UF pretreatment process by using alum lead to the decreased SWRO membrane salt rejection and flux. As the salt rejection and flux of SWRO membrane decreased, the concentration of silica and residual aluminum decreased. However, when adjusting coagulation pH for coagulation-UF pretreatment process, the residual aluminum salt concentration was decreased and SWRO membrane flux was increased.

• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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• v.33 no.6
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• pp.437-446
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• 2019

Reverse osmosis seawater desalination facilities can extend the cleaning cycle and replacement time of the reverse osmosis membrane by pretreatment process. Selection of pretreatment process depends on water quality. It was attempted in this study to select approriate pretreatment process for the Masan bay, which was high in particles and organic content. For this purpose, performances of pretreatment processes such as filter adsorber (FA), pore controllable fiber (PCF), and ultrafiltration (UF) were compared based on the silt density index (SDI). The SDI value of the filtrate should be less than 3. The study results showed that UF can produce the filtrate quality satisfying the requirement. However, the transmembrane pressure (TMP) of UF increased quickly, reaching 0.6 bar within 4 days. In order to secure stable operation, FA and PCF were combined with UF. The study results showed that combination of PCF and UF was able to extend the filtration duration (more than 2 months) until to reach TMP of 0.6 bar.

• Membrane Journal
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.29-34
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• 1993

Reverse osmosis(RO) and pervaporation(PV) membrane processes were compared with each other theoretically by using Paul and Ebra-Lima model. From this model the concentrations of liquid within the membrane when pressure was applied to the upper compartment(for PV case, the applied pressure is infinite) were calculated for rubber membrane-n-hexane and rubber membrane-benzene systems. The permeabilities of RO and PV were also calculated and compared for polyethylene film-n- hexane and polyethylene film- benzene systems Theoretically, the permeabilities of PV membrane were greater than those of RO membrane.

• Membrane and Water Treatment
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• v.7 no.3
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• pp.193-207
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• 2016

Boron is one of the most problematic inorganic pollutants and is difficult to remove in water. Strict standards have been imposed for boron content in water because of their high toxicity at high concentrations. Technologies using membrane processes such as reverse osmosis (RO) and nanofiltration (NF) have increasingly been employed in many industrial sectors. In this work, removal of boron from model water solutions was investigated using polyamide reverse osmosis and nanofiltration membranes. RO-AG, RO-SG, NF-90 and NF-HL membranes were used to reduce the boron from model water at different operational conditions. To understand the boron separation properties a characterization of the four membranes was performed by determining the pure water permeability, surface charge and molecular weight cut-off. Thereafter, the effect of feed pressure, concentration, ionic strength, nature of ions in solution and pH on the rejection of boron were studied. The rejection of boron can reach up to 90% for the three membranes AG, SG and NF-90 at pH = 11. The Spiegler-Kedem model was applied to experimental results to determine the reflection coefficient of the membrane ${\sigma}$ and the solute permeability $P_s$.

• Membrane and Water Treatment
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• v.2 no.4
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• pp.239-250
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• 2011

A photovoltaic powered ultrafiltration and reverse osmosis system was tested with a number of natural groundwaters in Australia. The objective of this study was to compare system performance at six remote field locations by assessing the impact of water composition and fluctuating energy on inorganic contaminant removal using a BW30-4040 membrane. Solar irradiance directly affected pressure and flow. Groundwater characteristics (including TDS, salts, heavy metals, and pH), impacted other performance parameters such as retention, specific energy consumption and flux. During continual system operation, retention of ions such as $Ca^{2+}$ and $Mg^{2+}$ was high (> 95%) with each groundwater which can be attributed to steric exclusion. The retention of smaller ions such as $NO_3{^-}$ was affected by weather conditions and groundwater composition, as convection/diffusion dominate retention. When solar irradiance was insufficient or fluctuations too great for system operation, performance deteriorated and retention dropped significantly (< 30% at Ti Tree). Groundwater pH affected flux and retention of smaller ions ($NO_3{^-}$ and $F^-$) because charge repulsion increases with pH. The results highlight variations in system performance (ion retention, flux, specific energy consumption) with real solar irradiance, groundwater composition, and pH conditions.

• Membrane Journal
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.81-88
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• 1995

Separation performance was measured for the disc plate and frame type reverse osmosis module using NaCl and sucrose solutions. An analysis of membrane performance was done following the equations proposed by Kimura-Sourirajan[8]. The membrane permeability was $2.17 \times 10^{-6}$(gmol/$cm^2$-sec-bar) and independent of operating pressure. The effect of concentration polarization for sucrose solution was higher than that of NaCl. Permeation flux for sucrose solution above 40 bar was decreased as operating pressure was increased. Solute rejection for NaCl solution was decreased, but that of sucrose was increased as operating pressure was increased.

• Membrane Journal
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• v.26 no.5
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• pp.351-364
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• 2016

In recent decades, many researchers have tried to improve desalination performances of polyamide (PA) thin-film composite membranes (TFCs) by incorporating nanomaterials into a selective PA layer. This review focuses on PA-based nanocomposite membranes with high performances for energy-effective desalination in reverse osmosis. Carbon based nanomaterial (e.g., graphene oxide (GO), carbon nanotubes (CNT)) and/or other nanoparticles (e.g., zeolite, silica and etc.,) were applied to overcome the trade-off correlation between water permeability and salt rejection of current polymeric desalination membranes. Here, this brief review will discuss current studies of PA-based nanocomposite membranes with enhanced separation characteristics and provide the future research direction to achieve further improved desalination performances.

• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.215-222
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• 2009

This study compares the performance of the filters with various media in pretreatment of seawater desalination by reverse osmosis. For this purpose, Masan bay seawater is used as raw water. The filter performance is evaluated by the filtrate quality and the head loss development. Five media is selected in this study: anthracite, $Filtralite^{(R)}$, sand, Pumice, $AFM^{(R)}$. These media are used in combination for dual media filter and alone for mono media filter. The comparison results show that NC0.8-1.6 is the best $Filtralite^{(R)}$. The dual media filter of NC0.8-1.6 and sand outperformed other filters in particle removal. The dual media filter of anthracite and sand showed good performance in organic removal. The mono media filter of Pumice produced the similar filtrate quality as the mono media filter of sand although the effective size of Pumice is considerably greater than that of sand. Due to big size, head loss development is maintained slow in the filtration of Pumice.