• Membrane Journal
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• v.30 no.2
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• pp.131-137
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• 2020

In this study, effect of inorganic particles on organic fouling was investigated by a laboratory-scaled pressurized membrane filtration. In order to cause organic fouling, sodium alginate (SA) was used as a feed solution. Regardless of the presence of inorganic SiO₂ particles, the complete pore blocking played an important role in determining the fouling rate during the initial period of membrane filtration. However, the formation of cake layer resulted in the membrane fouling more dominantly as filtration time progressed. In the presence of inorganic particles, both specific cake resistance and compressibility associated with the membrane fouling formed were relatively lower than that without SiO₂ particles. Membrane fouling was more severe at constant flux mode of filtration than that observed at constant pressure mode probably due to the concomitant increase of compressibility of fouling layer with transmembrane pressure (TMP). It was found that the presence of SA and SiO₂ particles in feed solution provided the synergistic effect on the hydraulic backwashing to reduce membrane fouling as compared to the SA solution alone without the inorganic particles.

• Membrane Journal
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.45-53
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• 2013

Membrane filtration processes are increasingly popular for drinking water treatment that requires high quality of water. But pre-treatment system (Coagulation/Flocculation/Sedimentation) requires increased footprint and installation cost. In addition, 5~10% of the concentrate are formed. In this study, the pressurized PVDF membrane (ECONITY Co., Ltd.) system was tested with surface water (Han River, South Korea) without pre-treatment. As a result, permeate flux was operated between 1 m/d and 2.4 m/d (at $25^{\circ}C$) without chemical cleaning for one year and membrane permeate turbidity was maintained stably under 0.05 NTU regardless of raw water turbidity. And we studied application of concetrate treatment of pressurized PVDF membrane by submerged PE membrane (ECONITY Co., Ltd.). As a result, we increased recovery of total treatment process to 99.5%.

• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.79-86
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• 2008

In Korea, most of the drinking water treatment relied upon the availability of the surface water, of which the raw water quality varied significantly by season and location. Therefore, the comparison of two operation modes (Pressurized type and Submerged type membrane system) must be estimated before the long-term establishment of two systems. In this study, two pilot-scale microfiltration systems with the capacity of $50m^3/day$ were installed and operated in two different modes, and the applicability of the system was determined based on the results such as the TMP (Trans-Membrane Pressure) and flux. For quantitatively comparing the two systems, a new concept, DRF (Differential Resistance Fraction) was introduced. The accumulated sum of the permeate after each cycle of chemical cleaning was also used as a tool for the system comparison.

• Membrane Journal
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• v.27 no.6
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• pp.519-527
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• 2017

Membrane fouling is the main issue hindering the expansion of low pressure membrane processes for surface water treatment. Therefore, applying periodic hydraulic cleaning for fouling control should be well optimized. Better understanding of membrane fouling associated with periodic hydraulic cleaning would be useful to optimize membrane cleaning strategies. By comparing experimental permeability data with the classical Hermia blocking laws, this study aims at analyzing membrane fouling and understanding dominant fouling mechanisms occurring when filtering a synthetic surface water solution with a pressurized membrane process during six filtration cycles of 30 min each, separated with cyclic cleaning of 1 min by backwashing and forward flushing separately and combined. When applying single cleaning technique, membrane fouling during the first cycles was controlled by complete blocking mechanism while the last cycles were dominated by cake formation. Nevertheless, when combining cleaning technique better membrane regeneration was obtained and fouling was mainly due to cake formation.

• Membrane Journal
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.194-200
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• 2014

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the performance of newly developed Large Pore Micro-Filtration (LPMF) membrane in Lab size for the application of water treatment, and to find its problems with solutions. The out-to-inside filtration hollow fiber LPMF membrane of which average pore size was $5{\mu}m$ was used at this study and its material was the PET braid reinforced PVDF. Filtration tests were done through gravity with 30 cm water head difference or pressure below 1.5 bar, and the backwash was done instantaneously with the filtrate after pressurizing it to about 4 bar. The water flux of the LPMF membrane with 0.2 bar TMP (Trans Membrane Pressure) was 2 times higher than $0.4{\mu}m$ MF membrane with $0.05{\mu}m$ UF filtrate of the tap water and it was measured also with 20~30 cm water head difference which showed over 800 LMH at 30 cm water head difference. And Time-To-Filter (TTF) was performed by using $5{\mu}m$ filter paper to optimize coagulants and dosage which enhanced filtrate's turbidity and stabilized filtration flux. When the LPMF was operated with 30 cm gravity with very high dose of inorganic coagulants, the flux was maintained over 80 LMH with 93.5~99.5% turbidity removal. Especially, the filtration was maintained stably in the flux and about 97% of the recovery rate by instantaneous pressurized backwash with about 4 bar of the filtrate when the packing density was about 19%. But there was instability in filtration, since the TMP was continuously going up by inefficient backwash when the packing density was 43%.

• Journal of Korean Society of Environmental Engineers
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• v.36 no.7
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• pp.492-497
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• 2014

This study investigated removal characteristics of organic matters in pretreatment and reverse osmosis (RO) membrane processes for seawater desalination. Also, the influence of the changes in characteristics of organic matters on the membrane fouling was assessed. The pretreatment processes included dual media filtration (DMF), pressurized membrane filtration (MF), and submerged membrane filtration (SMF). Turbidity, UV absorption at 254 nm, dissolved organic carbon, size exclusion chromatography (SEC), fluorescence excitation emission matrix (FEEM), and transparent exopolymer particles (TEP) in raw and processed waters were analyzed. Ions and minerals were not removed by any pretreatment process tested, but were removed over 99% through the RO membrane process. Hydrophobic organics, which can play major role in organic membrane fouling, were relatively readily removed compared with hydrophilic ones. Membrane based pretreatment such as MF and SMF exhibited better removals of organics than conventional DMF. As the levels of organics in pretreated water decreased, the silt density index (SDI) decreased. MF treated water exhibited the lowest SDI value; this is possibly due to the lowest TEP ($0.1-0.4{\mu}m$) concentrations.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.21 no.5
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• pp.402-410
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• 2008

Single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) were currently produced together with some contaminants such as a metallic catalyst, amorphous carbon, and graphitic nanoparticles, which should be sometimes purified for their applications. This study aimed to develop efficient, scalable purification processes but less harmful to SWCNTs. We designed three-step purification processes: acidic treatment, surface functionalization and soxhlet extraction, and heat treatment. During the soxhlet extraction using tetrahydrofuran, specifically, carbon impurities could be easily expelled through a glass thimble filter without any significant loss of CNTs. Finally, SWCNTs were left as a bulky paper on the filter through membrane filtration. Vertically aligned SWCNTs on one side of bulky paper were well developed in a speparation from the filter paper, which were formed by being sucked through the filter pores during the pressurized filtration. The bucky paper showed a very high peak current density of field emission up to $200\;mA/cm^2$ and uniform field emission images on phosphor, which seems very promising to be applied to vacuum microelectronics such as microwave power amplifiers and x-ray sources.

• Journal of Korean Society of Environmental Engineers
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• v.38 no.6
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• pp.323-328
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• 2016

Pressurized membrane used for side-stream MBR process requires fouling control strategy both for normal and abnormal operation conditions for stable operation of the facilities. In this study, $85m^3/day$ of pilot-scale side-stream MBR process was constructed for the evaluation of fouling mitigation by air bubble injection into the membrane module. In addition, fouling phenomena at abnormal operation conditions of low influent and/or loading rate were also investigated. Injection of air bubble was found to be effective in delaying transmembrane pressure (TMP) increase mainly due to scouring effect on the membrane surface, resulting in expanded filtration cycle at a high flux of $40L/m^2{\cdot}h$ (LMH). At abnormal operation condition, injection of PACl (53 mg/L as Al) into the bioreactor showed 19% reduction of TMP increase. However, inhibition of nitrifying bacteria by continuous PACl injection was observed from batch experiments. In contrast, injection of powdered activated carbon (PAC, 0.6 g/L) was able to maintain the initial TMP of $0.2kg/cm^2$ for 5 days at the abnormal conditions. It may have been caused from the adsorption of extracellular polymeric substances (EPS), which was known to be excessively released during growth inhibition condition and act as the major foulants in MBR operations.

• Journal of Korean Society on Water Environment
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• v.33 no.4
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• pp.403-408
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• 2017

In these days, wastewater reclamation and seawater desalination play essential role in addressing the challenge of worldwide water scarcity. Particularly, reverse osmosis (RO) for seawater desalination process is commonly used due to less energy consumption than conventional thermodynamic systems. However, membrane fouling and electrical energy consumption during operation of RO system for seawater desalination haver continued to be a obstruction to its application. In this study, therefore, wastewater secondary effluent is used for osmotic dilution of seawater. Firstly, fouling behaviour of RO by simulating wastewater effluent in osmotic dilution process was measured and we calculated energy consumption of overall desalination process by theoretical equations and commercial program. Our results reveal that RO membrane fouling can be efficiently controlled by pre-treatment systems such as nano filtration (NF) or forward osmosis (FO) process. Especially FO system for osmotic dilution process is a non-pressurized membrane system and, therefore, the operating energy consumption of overall desalination system was the lowest. Moreover, fouling layer on FO membrane is comparatively weak and reversible enough to be disrupted by physical cleaning. Thus, RO system with low salinity feed water through FO process is possible as a less energy consuming desalination system with efficient membrane fouling control.

• Journal of Korean Society of Environmental Engineers
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• v.35 no.9
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• pp.624-629
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• 2013

The relation between performance maintenance conditions and those cost efficiency was studied to choose an optimum operating condition in the seawater desalination pretreatment system. A hollow fiber microfiltration module, which was developed with domestic technology, was tested with the various operating conditions such as chemically enhanced backwash cycles and design dosages of a cleaning chemical. Transmembrane pressure was measured to investigate membrane fouling status and cleaning degree. In addition, economic analysis was performed to compare water production costs by the operation condition. As a result, The operation mode III, chemically enhanced backwash at once a day with 100 mg/L of sodium hypochlorite (NaOCl) was selected. The concurrent evaluation between membrane filtration performance and its economic analysis will be suitable to choose an efficient optimum condition.