• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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• v.19 no.5
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• pp.632-638
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• 2005

Membrane fouling index such as Silt Density Index (SDI) and Modified Fouling Index (MFI) is an important parameter in design of the integrated RO/NF membrane processes for drinking water treatment. In this study, the effect of particle, membrane and feed water characteristics on membrane fouling index were investigated systematically. Higher fouling index values were observed when filtering suspensions with smaller particle size and higher feed particle concentration. Larger membrane resistance due to smaller pore size resulted in an increased membrane fouling index. The variations of feed water hardness and TDS concentrations did not show any impact on fouling index, suggesting that there were no significant colloidal interactions among particles and thus the porosity of particle cake layer accumulated on the membrane surface could be assumed to be 0.36 according to random packing density. Based on the experimental observations, fundamental membrane fouling index model was developed using Happel Cell. The effect of primary model parameters including particle size ($a_p$), particle concentration ($C_o$), membrane resistance ($R_m$), were accurately assessed without any fitting parameters, and the prediction of membrane fouling index such as MFI exhibited very good agreement with the experimental results.

• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.139-146
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• 2013

A process diagnosis method for membrane water treatment plant was developed using a constant flux membrane fouling model. This diagnosis method can be applied to a real-field membrane-based water treatment plant as an early alarming system for membrane fouling. The constant flux membrane fouling model was based on the simplest equation form to describe change in trans-membrane pressure (TMP) during the filtration cycle from a literature. The model was verified using a pilot-scale microfiltraton (MF) plant with two commercial MF membrane modules (72 m2 of membrane area). The predicted TMP data were produced using the model, where the modeling parameters were obtained by the least square method using the early plant data and modeling equations. The diagnosis was carried out by comparing the predicted TMP data (as baseline) and real plant data. As a result of the case study, the diagnsis method worked pretty well to predict the early points where fouling started to occur.

• Membrane and Water Treatment
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• v.9 no.5
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• pp.343-351
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• 2018

As membrane fouling is based on various factors, it is a complex phenomenon that is hard to estimate. This study investigated membrane fouling in a thermophilic jet loop membrane bioreactor (JLMBR). With this purpose, four different empirical membrane fouling models with different sludge retention times were applied on the flow data obtained in the system. As a result of the model implementation, it was found for all sludge retention times that, standard blocking is effective in the first 1.5 hours of filtration, while cake filtration was dominant in the remaining duration. Additionally, it was observed that as the sludge retention time increases, membrane fouling rate decreases.

• Membrane and Water Treatment
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• v.9 no.5
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• pp.373-383
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• 2018

Fouling by solids and microorganisms is the major obstacle limiting the efficient use of membrane wastewater treatment. In our previous study, two stages microalgae/membrane filtration system was proposed to treat anaerobic digested palm oil mill effluent (AnPOME). This two stages microalgae/membrane filtration system had showed great potential for the treatment of AnPOME with high removal of COD, $NH_3-N$, $PO_4{^{3-}}$, TSS, turbidity, and colour. However, fouling behavior of the membrane in this two stages microalgae/membrane filtration system was still unknown. In this study, empirical models that describe permeate flux decline for dead-end filtration (pore blocking - complete, intermediate, and standard; and cake layer formation) presented by Hermia were used to fit the experimental results in identifying the fouling mechanism under different experimental conditions. Both centrifuged and non-centrifuged samples were taken from the medium with 3 days RT intervals, from day 0 to day 12 to study their influence on fouling mechanisms described by Hermia for ultrafiltration (UF), nanofiltration (NF), and reverse osmosis (RO) filtration mode. Besides, a more detailed study on the use of resistance-in-series model for deadend filtration was done to investigate the fouling mechanisms involved in membrane filtration of AnPOME collected after microalgae treatment. The results showed that fouling of UF and NF membrane was mainly caused by cake layer formation and it was also supported by the analysis for resistance-in-series model. Whereas, fouling of RO membrane was dominated by concentration polarization.

• Membrane Journal
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.55-61
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• 2016

Organic fouling observed in submerged membrane filtration as a pretreatment for seawater desalination increases energy consumption for membrane operation because of requiring frequent chemical cleaning and membrane replacement. In membrane pretreatment for seawater facing with algae blooms, membrane fouling was observed in submerged microfiltration using sodium alginate model compound which is one of the main components of extracellular polymeric substances. Without aeration, aglinate fouling increased with its concentration while aeration reduced the alginate fouling effectively regardless of its concentration tested. In the absence of aeration, alingate fouling tended to be decreased with increasing calcium concentration. However, this effectiveness was reduced by increasing sodium chloride concentration. At high concentration of sodium chloride and calcium similar to the seawater conditions, aeration reduced initial fouling. However, as time progressed, the effect of increased airflow rate on fouling reduction was not significant, implying that optimum airflow rate to control alginate fouling in submerged microfiltration can exist.

• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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• v.34 no.3
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• pp.183-190
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• 2020

Although membrane bio-reactor (MBR) has been widely applied for wastewater treatment plants, the membrane fouling problems are still considered as an obstacle to overcome. Thus, many studies and commercial developments on mitigating membrane fouling in MBR have been carried out. Recently, high voltage impulse (HVI) has gained attention for a possible alternative technique for desalting, non-thermal sterilization, bromate-free disinfection and mitigation of membrane fouling. In this study, it was verified if the HVI could be used for mitigation of membrane fouling, particularly the internal pore fouling in MBR. The HVI was applied to the fouled membrane under different conditions of electric fields (E) and contact time (t) of HVI in order to investigate how much of internal pore fouling was reduced. The internal pore fouling resistance (R_f) after HVI induction was reduced as both E and t increased. For example, R_f decreased by 19% when the applied E was 5 kV/cm and t was 80 min. However, the R_f decreased by 71% as the E increased to 15 kV/cm under the same contact time. The correlation between E and t that needed for 20% of R_f reduction was modeled based on kinetics. The model equation, E^1.54t = 1.2 × 10³ was obtained by the membrane filtration data that were obtained with and without HVI induction. The equation states the products of En and t is always constant, which means that the required contact time can be reduced in accordance with the increase of E.

• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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• v.35 no.6
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• pp.425-436
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• 2021

In this study, chemically enhanced steam cleaning(CESC) was applied as a novel and efficient method for the control of organic and inorganic fouling in ceramic membrane filtration. The constant filtration regression model and the resistance in series model(RISM) were used to investigate the membrane fouling mechanisms. For total filtration, the coefficient of determination(R²) with an approximate value of 1 was obtained in the intermediate blocking model which is considered as the dominant contamination mechanism. In addition, most of the coefficient values showed similar values and this means that the complex fouling was formed during the filtration period. In the RISM, R _c/R _f increased about 4.37 times in chemically enhanced steam cleaning compared to physical backwashing, which implies that the internal fouling resistance was converted to cake layer resistance, so that the membrane fouling hardly to be removed by physical backwashing could be efficiently removed by chemically enhanced steam cleaning. The results of flux recovery rate showed that high-temperature steam may loosen the structure of the membrane cake layer due to the increase in diffusivity and solubility of chemicals and finally enhance the cleaning effect. As a consequence, it is expected that chemically enhanced steam cleaning can drastically improve the efficiency of membrane filtration process when the characteristics of the foulant are identified.

• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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• v.32 no.2
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• pp.77-87
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• 2018

In this study, the effects of operating conditions on the formation of reversible and irreversible fouling were investigated in the filtration using ceramic membrane for water treatment process. The effect of coagulation pretreatment on fouling formation was also evaluated by comparing the performance of membrane filtration both with and without addition of coagulant. A resistance-in-series-model was applied for the analysis of membrane fouling. Total resistance (RT) and internal fouling resistance (Rf) increased in the membrane filtration process without coagulation as membrane flux and feed water concentrations increased. Internal fouling resistance, which was not recovered by physical cleaning, was more than 70% of the total resistance at the range of the membrane flux more than $5m^3/m^2{\cdot}day$. In the combined process with coagulation, the cake layer resistance (Rc) increased to about 30-80% of total resistance. As the cake layer formed by coagulation floc was easily removed by physical cleaning, the recovery rate by physical cleaning was 54~90%. It was confirmed from the results that the combined process was more efficient to recover the filtration performance by physical cleaning due to higher formation ratio of reversible fouling, resulted in the mitigation of the frequency of chemical cleaning.

• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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• v.33 no.2
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• pp.111-119
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• 2019

Electro-coagulation process has been gained an attention recently because it could overcome the membrane fouling problems in MBR(Membrane bio-reactor). Effect of the key operational parameters in electro-coagulation, current density(${\rho}_i$) and contact time(t) on membrane fouling reduction was investigated in this study. A kinetic model for ${\rho}_i$ and t required to reduce the membrane fouling was suggested under different MLSS(mixed liquor suspended solids) concentration. Total 48 batch type experiments of electro-coagulations under different sets of current densities(2.5, 6, 12 and $24A/m^2$), contact times(0, 2, 6 and 12 hr) and MLSS concentration(4500, 6500 and 8500mg/L) were carried out. After each electro-coagulation under different conditions, a series of membrane filtration was performed to get information on how much of membrane fouling was reduced. The membrane fouling decreased as the ${\rho}_i$ and t increased but as MLSS decreased. Total fouling resistances, Rt (=Rc+Rf) were calculated and compared to those of the controls (Ro), which were obtained from the experiments without electro-coagulation. A kinetic approach for the fouling reduction rate (Rt/Ro) was carried out and three equations under different MLSS concentration were suggested: i) ${\rho}_i^{0.39}t=3.5$ (MLSS=4500 mg/L), ii) ${\rho}_i^{0.46}t=7.0$ (MLSS=6500 mg/L), iii) ${\rho}_i^{0.74}t=10.5$ (MLSS=8500 mg/L). These equations state that the product of ${\rho}_i$ and t needed to reduce the fouling in certain amounts (in this study, 10% of fouling reduction) is always constant.

• Membrane Journal
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• v.29 no.6
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• pp.329-338
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• 2019

The constant-pressure and constant-flux membrane filtration experiments of alumina colloidal solution are performed to investigate defouling effect of the natural convection instability flow (NCIF) induced in membrane module. The permeate flux at constant-pressure and the transmembrane pressure (TMP) at constant-flux experiments are measured by changes the inclined angle (0, 90 and 180°) of membrane module to the gravity, and flux results are analyzed by using the blocking filtration model. NCIF are more induced as the inclined angles increased from 0° to 180°, and the maximum induced NCIF at 180° angle enhances flux to 2.8 times and reduces TMP to 85% after two-hour operation. As a result of analyzing flux data by applying the blocking filtration model, it is more reasonable to analyze them by using the intermediate blocking model within 15-minute operation time and then thereafter times by using the cake filtration model. The induced NCIF at 180° angle reduces the intermediate blocking fouling at 52% in the early operation time of 15-minute and thereafter the cake layer fouling at 93%. The main membrane fouling control mechanism of NCIF induced in membrane module is evaluated as suppressing the formation of the cake layer of particulate colloidal materials on membrane surface.