• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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• v.27 no.6
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• pp.779-785
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• 2013

This study investigated the applicability of a two step microfiltration(MF) and reverse osmosis(RO) membrane system for reuse of tunnel wastewater. In this two step process, the MF system first treated only micropollutants in tunnel wastewater such as suspended solids(SS) and heavy metals, achieving less than 0.2 NTU turbidity, less than 1.1 mg/L chemical oxygen demand($COD_{Mn}$) and less than 0.8 mg/L total manganese(Mn). The RO system then removed over 95 % of the remaining pollutnats and particles, resulting in less than 0.02 NTU turbidity, less than 0.5 mg/L chemical oxygen demand($COD_{Mn}$), less than 0.04 mg/L total nitrogen(T-N) and less than 0.01 mg/L total phosphorus(T-P). In particular, addition of an RO system could lead to markedly reduced high salt concentrations in tunnel wastewater, approaching almost zero. Thus, reclaimed water using the combined membrane system could satisfy current South Korean regulations concerning wastewater reuse(turbidity ${\leq}2.0$ NTU; T-N ${\leq}10mg/L$; T-P ${\leq}0.5mg/L$; Salinity ${\leq}250mg{\cdot}Cl/L$).

• Membrane Journal
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.251-256
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• 2013

In this study, acetylated methyl cellulose (AMC) was successfully used as a support layer of thin film composite (TFC) forward osmosis (FO) membrane. A selective polyamide active layer, interfacially polymerized, was coated on top of various substrate layers. The structure and performance of the TFC FO membrane based on the AMC substrate were compared with those of TFC FO membranes with different polymeric support layers. The experimental results showed that the AMC FO membrane performance was better than other FO membranes due to its characteristic morphology and lower back diffusion rate of salts.

• Membrane and Water Treatment
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• v.8 no.5
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• pp.449-462
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• 2017

Direct treatment of municipal wastewater by forward osmosis (FO) process was evaluated in terms of water flux decline, reverse salt diffusion, pollutants rejection and concentration efficiency by using synthetic seawater as the draw solution. It was found that when operating in PRO mode (active layer facing the draw solution), although the FO membrane exhibited higher osmotic water flux, more severe flux decline and reverse salt diffusion was also observed due to the more severe fouling of pollutants in the membrane support layer and accompanied fouling enhanced concentration polarization. In addition, although the water flux decline was shown to be lower for the FO mode (active layer facing the feed solution), irreversible membrane fouling was identified in both PRO and FO modes as the water flux cannot be restored to the initial value by physical flushing, highlighting the necessity of chemical cleaning in long-term operation. During the 7 cycles of filtration conducted in the experiments, the FO membrane exhibited considerably high rejection for TOC, COD, TP and $NH_4{^+}-N$ present in the wastewater. By optimizing the volume ratio of seawater draw solution/wastewater feed solution, a concentration factor of 3.1 and 3.7 was obtained for the FO and PRO modes, respectively. The results demonstrated the validity of the FO process for direct treatment of municipal wastewater by using seawater as the draw solution, while facilitating the subsequent utilization of concentrated wastewater for bioenergy production, which may have special implications for the coastline areas.

• Membrane Journal
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.29-41
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• 1998

Thin-film composite reverse osmosis membranes of aromatic polyamides were prepared by the interfacial polymerization. Aromatic polyamides as active skin layer were made from the interfacial polymerization of MPD(m-phenylene diamine) in the aqueous and TMC(trimesoyl chloride) in HCFC(1,1-dichloro-1-fluoroethane) organic solvent. The performances of the various reverse osmosis composite membranes prepared by changing processing variables were examined. The performance of membrane manufactured by batch system was varied with organic solvent, monomer concentration, dipping time, heat treatment temperature, acid acceptor, ethanol post treatment, and acid post treatment. Ethanol post treatment was the most dominant factors in increasing permeate amount, while the monomer concentration and dipping time were the main factors in increasing selectivity. The spiral-wound module was produced with the membrane prepared at optimum condition of the continuous process. Comparing the performance of this membrane module made here with that of commercial membrane module, the permeate flux was increased by 33% while the rejection was decreased by 5%.

• 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.

• Membrane Journal
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• v.30 no.1
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• pp.66-77
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• 2020

The current study focused on the effect of twisting hollow fibers (HFs) in a module during forward osmosis operation mode. Computational fluid dynamics simulation was employed for a straight HF module and twisted modules with five different angles to predict the mass transfer and observe the draw solution profile in terms of concentration and pressure. The simulation results showed that when the membranes were twisted, the concentration was distributed more evenly and the pressure at the module outlet increased gradually as the twisting angle increased. As pressure at the outlet increased, the fluid velocity inside the membrane decreased and the residence time of fluid increased, thereby facilitating mass exchange across the membrane. This is evidenced by a doubling of the ratio of water flux through the membrane in module flux when the HFs were twisted.

• 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.

• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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• v.35 no.1
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• pp.93-100
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• 2021

Forward osmosis (FO) process is a chemical potential driven process, where highly concentrated draw solution (DS) is used to take water through semi-permeable membrane from feed solution (FS) with lower concentration. Recently, commercial FO membrane modules have been developed so that full-scale FO process can be applied to seawater desalination or water reuse. In order to design a real-scale FO plant, the performance prediction of FO membrane modules installed in the plant is essential. Especially, the flux prediction is the most important task because the amount of diluted draw solution and concentrate solution flowing out of FO modules can be expected from the flux. Through a previous study, a theoretical based FO module model to predict flux was developed. However it needs an intensive numerical calculation work and a fitting process to reflect a complex module geometry. The idea of this work is to introduce deep learning to predict flux of FO membrane modules using 116 experimental data set, which include six input variables (flow rate, pressure, and ion concentration of DS and FS) and one output variable (flux). The procedure of optimizing a deep learning model to minimize prediction error and overfitting problem was developed and tested. The optimized deep learning model (error of 3.87%) was found to predict flux better than the theoretical based FO module model (error of 10.13%) in the data set which were not used in machine learning.

• Proceedings of the Membrane Society of Korea Conference
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• 2008.05a
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• pp.268-270
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• 2008

• Journal of Korean Society of Environmental Engineers
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• v.38 no.9
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• pp.476-481
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• 2016

Pressure retarded osmosis (PRO) is a quite new technique for power generation using an osmotically driven membrane process. In the PRO process, water permeates through a semipermeable membrane from a low concentration feed solution to a high concentration draw solution due to osmotic pressure. This study carried out to evaluate the performance of the 8 in spiral wound membrane module using reverse osmosis concentrate for a draw solution and reverse osmosis permeate for a feed solution. Three different flowrates of draw and feed solution, such as 2.4 L/min, 5.0 L/min, and 10.0 L/min were used to estimate the power density and water flux under various range of hydraulic pressure differences between 5 bar and 30 bar. In addition, the effects of feed and draw solution concentration, flowrate, and mixing ratio on 8 in spiral wound PRO membrane module performance were investigated in this study. As major results, increases of the draw solution concentration lead to the improvement of power denstiy, and water flux. Also, increase of flowrate resulted in the improvement of power density and water flux. In addition, optimal mixing ratio of draw and feed solution inlet flowrate was found to be 1:1 to attain a maximum power denstiy.