Automated electrophoretic membrane cleaning for dead-end microfiltration and ultrafiltration

Abstract

Abstract Membrane separation technology has been identified as a new and clean technology and as an alternative to the classical separation processes. Lately, it has been widely used in the wastewater treatment applications. However membrane fouling is a major bottleneck in this separation technology, as expected in the industrial application of such finely porous media. As the filtration process continues, the concentration of solute keeps building up on the membrane surface to form a filter cake. This results in a continuous declining of the flux. A number of methods are reported in preventing the membrane fouling. One of the established method is by using electric pulses known to be electrophoretic membrane cleaning, taking into account the effect of electroporeses, electroosmosis and the hydrodynamics forces during the application of the electric pulses. In the current study, an automated experimental rig has been developed to test this electrophoretic membrane cleaning. This rig enables to test the effectiveness of this method for electrophoretic membrane cleaning of dead-end microfiltration and ultrafiltration processes. The details of this rig will be presented and the process variables varied in this study are the strength of the applied voltage, pulse interval and pulse duration. An average flux is measured in each experiment as an indication of effectiveness of this method in reducing the membrane fouling. The experiments are controlled and monitored by a PC fitted with interface via an A/D converter which allows the collection of all the data automatically. Data are presented for microfiltration and ultrafiltration processes. In all cases, electrophoretic membrane cleaning for microfiltration and ultrafiltration processes has been successful by reducing the membrane fouling at different variables.