• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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• v.23 no.6
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• pp.811-823
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• 2009

Seawater desalination process using a reverse osmosis (RO) membrane has been considered as one of the most promising technologies in solving the water scarcity problems in many arid regions around the world. To protect RO membrane in the process, a thorough understanding of the pretreatment process is particularly needed. Seawater organic matters (SWOMs) may form a gel layer on the membrane surface, which will increase a concentration polarization. As the SWOMs can be utilized as a substrate, membrane biofouling will be progressed on the RO membrane surface, resulting in the flux decline and increase of trans-membrane pressure drop and salt passage. In the middle of disinfection, an optimal chlorine dosage and neutralizer (sodium bisulfite, SBS) should be practiced to prevent oxidizing the surface of RO membranes. Additional fundamental research including novel non-susceptible biofouling membranes would be necessary to provide a guide line for the proper pretreatment process.

• Journal of Korean Society of Environmental Engineers
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• v.27 no.8
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• pp.799-806
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• 2005

Applying coagulation process before membrane filtration showed not only reducing membrane fouling, but also improving the removal of dissolved organic materials that might otherwise not be removed by the membrane alone. Also, slow mixing didn't affect the reduction of membrane fouling, and rapid mixing using an in-line static mixer was more effective than using backmixer. In addition, only 11 percent of dissolved organic matter in raw water was the primary cause of fouling. Furthermore, tile primary foulant of UF membrane was hydrophobic substance, which can easily be removed by coagulation.

• Membrane Journal
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.163-170
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• 2011

Membrane fouling control in water treatment may be the main obstacle for wider implementation and lower cost. A novel fluorescent spectroscope sensor device for membrane fouling integrity monitoring has been developed and evaluated in this study. PSf membranes for water treatment has been fabricated with three types of organic fluorescent materials, OB, FP, KCB. The fluorescent signal from membrane surface was analyzed throughout the filtration process. It was found that the fluorescent signal due to the membrane fouling decreased and the developed device is reliable for membrane fouling monitoring.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• v.45 no.6
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• pp.669-676
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• 2007

The raw water was fractionated into hydrophobic (HPO), transphilic (TPI), and hydrophilic portions (HPI) using XAD resins. The raw water DOC contains 39% of hydrophilics, 43% of hydrophobics, and 18% of transphilics. When fractionated NOM (natural organic matter) was passed through hydrophilic membrane with 100 kDa, hydrophobic portion (HPO) caused the most fouling and hydrophilic portion (HPI) caused the least fouling. This could be related to size and adsorption capability of organics. Small sized organics would pass through membrane pores, but large sized organics would be attracted to either membrane pores or surface, which led to the fouling. An effect of membrane pore size on membrane fouling is related to the availability of organics at membrane pores. As the pore size became larger, the more organics were transported into the membrane pore. Some organics caused pore blocking, and others caused pore adsorption, which resulted in membrane fouling. Membrane material is also important for membrane fouling. More fouling occurred at hydrophobic membrane than hydrophilic membrane regardless of its pore size. Hydrophobic interaction caused more fouling at hydrophobic membrane.

• 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.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• v.43 no.2
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• pp.236-242
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• 2005

Membrane fouling by protein mixtures during microfiltration has been investigated for binary mixtures of bovine serum albumin (BSA), casein, lysozyme, pepsin, and ovalbumin. Filtration experiments were carried out using $0.2{\mu}m$ polycarbonate track-etched (PCTE) membrane in a stirred cell under constant transmembrane pressure (14 kPa) and concentration of hydrogen ion (pH=11) to study the effect of mixture composition on filtrate flux decline. Flux decline data were analyzed using a pore blockage-cake formation model developed recently. It was found that the model is in a good agreement with the experimental data. Fouling parameters such as the rate of pore blockage(${\alpha}$), the initial resistance of the protein deposit ($R_{po}$) and the increasing rate of the protein layer resistance(${\beta}$) were used to evaluate the rate of filtrate flow by membrane fouling in the binary mixture system. Generally, the trend of ${\alpha}$ is comparable with that of filtrate flux decline. It was also found that fast flux decreasing was observed over the binary mixture containing casein. The result is due to high value of the initial resistance of the protein deposit ($R_{po}$) over casein.

• Journal of Korean Society of Environmental Engineers
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• v.34 no.6
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• pp.406-413
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• 2012

Effect of three additives, chitosan, ferric chloride, and MPE50 on membrane fouling reduction was studied. They were introduced with various dosing rate into activated sludge, and changes in filtration resistance measured by the batch cell filtration test were evaluated. Both the filtration resistance and the specific cake resistance were minimized at 20 mg/g-MLSS with chitosan, 70 mg/g-MLSS with ferric chloride, and 20 mg/g-MLSS with MPE50 addition, respectively. Introduction of the additives into the activated sludge resulted in reduction of not only cake resistance, but also fouling resistance. However, the chitosan addition to three different activated sludge resulted in three different optimal dose of 10, 20, 30 mg/g-MLSS, respectively. This implies that the optimal dose is dependent on sludge characteristics rather than a constant value. Overdose above the optimal dosage always aggravated filterability in all cases. Zeta potential of sludge flocs, relative hydrophobicity, floc size distribution, soluble EPS concentration and supernatant turbidity were measured in order to analyze fouling reduction mechanism. Nearly neutral surface charge along with the largest particle size was observed at the optimal dose. This could be explained by particle destabilization and restabilization mechanism as positively charged additives were injected into sludge flocs of negative surface charge. Both soluble EPS concentration and supernatant turbidity also showed the lowest value at the optimal dose. These foulants are believed to be coagulated and entrapped in sludge flocs during flocculation. Chitosan and MPE50 which are cationic polymeric substances showed higher reduction in both soluble EPS and fine particles comparing with ferric chloride.

• Membrane Journal
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.65-74
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• 2008

NOM and fine particles are the main target materials in water treatment using membranes. Particularly, humic substances extracted from soils are frequently used in many fundamental studies representing natural organic matter in raw water for drinking water treatment. In this study, ultrafiltration (UF) of artificial humic water and natural river water was conducted and the characteristics of removal efficiency and permeability were compared. In the UF of river water, the transmembrane pressure increased in the same pattern with that of 5 mg/L humic water. For the removal of organic matter and fine particles, however, two types of feed water had shown different trends. Kaolin particles and humic acids added to artificial water were better removed, while colloids and organics in natural water were relatively poorly removed. From the $UV_{254}$ and GPC analyses, it seemed that the hydrophobicity and size of humic substances contributed to the greater removal of organic matter. The UF membrane applied for humic water also showed a higher flux recovery by caustic chemical cleaning than that for river water.

• Membrane Journal
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.276-284
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• 2014

In this study, a hydrophobic polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) membrane was modified by coating neutral hydrophilic poly(vinyl alcohol). The flux of pure water was measured and then fouling test was conducted with bovin serum albumin (BSA) as model protein foulant. As a result, the experiments showed that pure water flux was decreased but anti-fouling property was significantly enhanced. Pure water flux with increasing molecular weights of the polymer was decreased and fouling resistance was enhanced. Also, Pure water flux with increasing solution concentration was decreased and fouling resistance was enhanced. It is probably due to the increase in hydrophilicity and decrease in roughness of the membrane surface, as revealed by contact angle and AFM analysis.

• Membrane Journal
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• v.25 no.6
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• pp.503-514
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• 2015

In this study, water purification system without coagulant was consisted of F/A and membrane to produce purified water which only uses physical treatment without coagulant. Because the use of coagulant has a possibility remaining of hazardous aluminum with our health. Especially, the Filtralite was reviewed the possibility to remove turbidity and organic material. It was found that the turbidity removal rate of Filtralite was 83~84%. It show that Filtralite has similar efficiency to sand-filter. But Filtralite has higher 50% removal rate of organic material than sand-filter due to well-developed pore on the surface of it. So, Filtralite could be used to substitute the sand-filter for the F/A process due to higher removal rate. And also coupled with activated carbon in F/A process, TMP was increased by TOC value. To prevent increasing TMP, media that has outstanding organic adsorption ability should be used.