The Identification of Fouling in Reverse Osmosis in the Treatment of Water with Petroleum Substances

Abstract

Water containing petroleum substances is very difficult to clean, and the treatment process usually consists of several stages. Despite the increasing use of integrated membrane processes to purify natural waters, including the removal of organic substances, work is underway on the search for new processes and their optimization. This paper deals with the study of the removal of petroleum hydrocarbons from the benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylene (BTEX) group by reverse osmosis and optimization. The research was conducted on surface water enriched with a fuel mixture. Then, the reverse osmosis efficiency was modeled using the constant pressure filtration model (Hermia model), which determined the most likely membrane blocking mechanism. When the membrane was operated on surface water enriched with BTEX, the blocking of the membrane was based on the n = 0 cake mechanism. In surface water alone, the highest correlation coefficient was 0.9994 and corresponded to a temporary blocking mechanism (n = 1).