Abstract
Particle-laden source waters are ubiquitously present in the natural environment and engineered systems. The demand for facile and energy-efficient treatment of these waters is increasing due to global water shortage aggravated by climate change. Therefore, a hydrocyclone membrane filtration cell (HMFC) enabled by 3D-printing technology was developed in this study and examined for its capability and mechanisms for pretreatment- and backwash-free filtration of inorganic and organic particle suspensions. Computational fluid dynamics simulation results indicate that the particles in the HMFC are subject to a strong swirling and turbulent flow field with turbulent kinetic energy ranging from 0.02-2.42 m2/s2 and shear strain from 104-105 s−1, 106 and 100 times higher than those obtained with conventional membrane filtration systems, respectively. This unique flow condition leads to centrifugal/centripetal, revolving, and rotational particle motions and turbulent-induced diffusion. The experimental results revealed that these particle motions effectively eliminated particle deposition on a porous microfiltration membrane and completely alleviated membrane fouling that were serious in traditional filtration modes. These findings shed light on the development of novel membrane filtration systems with enhanced fluid dynamics, for energy-efficient harvesting of clean water from particle-laden water resources.
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