• Membrane and Water Treatment
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.83-92
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• 2010

To improve the antifouling characteristics of polypropylene hollow fiber microporous membranes in a submerged membrane-bioreactor for wastewater treatment, the surface-modification was conducted by Ar plasma treatment. Surface hydrophilicity was assessed by water contact angle measurements. The advancing and receding water contact angles reduced after the surface modification, and hysteresis between the advancing and receding water contact angles was enlarged after Ar plasma treatment due to the increased surface roughness after surface plasma treatment. After continuous operation in a submerged membrane-bioreactor for about 55 h, the flux recovery after water cleaning and the flux ratio after fouling were improved by 20.0 and 143.0%, while the reduction of flux was reduced by 28.6% for the surface modified membrane after 1 min Ar plasma treatment, compared to those of the unmodified membrane. Morphological observations showed that the mean membrane pore size after Ar plasma treatment reduced as a result of the deposition of the etched species; after it was used in the submerged membrane-bioreactor, the further decline of the mean membrane pore size was caused by the deposition of foulants. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and infrared spectroscopy confirmed that proteins and polysaccharide-like substances were the main foulants in the precipitate.

• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.311-319
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• 2017

Scale formation is inevitable problem when seawater is treated by vacuum membrane distillation. The reason is the high concentration of calcium ion($Ca^{2+}$), sulfate ion(${SO_4}^{2-}$) and bicarbonate ion(${HCO_3}^-$). These ions form calcium sulfate($CaSO_4$) and calcium carbonate($CaCO_3$) on the membrane. The scale formed on membrane has to be removed, because the flux can be severely reduced and membrane wetting can be incurred. This study was carried out to investigate scale formation and effectiveness of acid cleaning in vacuum membrane distillation for SWRO brine treatment. It was found that permeate flux gradually declined until volume concentration factor(VCF) reached around 1.55 and membrane wetting started over VCF over 1.6 in the formation of precipitates containing $CaSO_4$ during VMD operation. In contrast, when calcium carbonate formed on membrane, permeate flux was gradually reduced until VCF 3.0. The precipitates containing both $CaSO_4$ and $CaCO_3$ were formed on the membrane surface and in the membrane pore.

• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.95-106
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• 2011

Even though MBR processes have many advantages such as high quality effluents, a small footprint and convenience for operation compared to conventional activated sludge processes, there are some shortcomings in terms of the cost and potential fouling incident that keeps MBR (Membrane bioreactor) processes from being widely applied. To reduce these problems, PTFE (Polytetrafluoroethylene) flat sheet membranes that have excellent permeability and durability were tested instead of PVDF (Polyvinylidene fluoride) membrane which is being used widely in water treatment. Low concentration of sodium hydroxide (NaOH) was also added into the membrane modules in order to prevent the membrane fouling as well as to provide the alkalinity. With conditions mentioned above, a pilot-scale MBR system based on the MLE (Modified Ludzack Ettinger) process was operated at flux of 40 $L/m^{2}/hr$ and over 15,000 mg/L MLSS concentration for about 8 months. And coagulant(alum) was added into the membrane tank to remove phosphorus. Although the more coagulant is added the more effectively phosphorus is removed, that can lead to fouling for a long operation(Ronseca et al.,2009). By the way there is a research that fouling grow up after stopping injection of coagulant(Holbrook, 2004). Stable operation of MBR systems was achieved without major chemical cleaning and the effluent quality was found to be good enough to comply with the treated waste water quality regulations of the Korea.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2004.11a
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• pp.1629-1633
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• 2004

Liquid is commonly introduced as transversal jets in venturi scrubber which is one of the gas cleaning equipments. The jet dynamics such as penetration and breakup is of fundamental importance to the dust-collection efficiency. We have developed a model that can numerically simulate the breakup of the liquid jet in crossflow. This simulation consists of models on liquid column, jet surface breakup, column fracture and secondary droplet breakup. These models have been embedded in the KIVA3-V code. We have calculated such parameters as the jet penetration, jet trajectory, droplet size, velocity field and the volume flux distribution. The results are compared with the experimental data in this paper.

• Clean Technology
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.119-128
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• 2002

In the present study the membrane filtration characteristics of a commercially available synthetic water-based cutting oil through two kinds of ultrafiltration membranes (HF1-45-CM50 and HF1-43-CM100) with molecular weight cut-offs of 50,000 and 100,000, respectively, have been investigated in detail. Among these membranes, the hydrophilic one (HF1-45-CM50) was found to show a satisfactory result for both the permeate flux and the permeability of oil components, whereas the permeate flux obtained with the hydrophobic membrane (HF1-43-CM100) appears to be significantly low, indicating that synthetic cutting oil was easily wetted on the hydrophobic membrane surface and induced more membrane fouling. The effect of material characteristics of the membrane on the filtration characteristics was found to be much more significant compared with the mean pore size of the membrane. Backflushing by nitrogen gas was applied to reduce the formation of a gel layer and membrane fouling. With the hydrophilic membrane, the backflushing was found to increase the permeate flux, whereas the backflushing resulted in a decrease in flux for the hydrophobic membrane. The flux recovery was observed to be highest when the membranes fouled with waste synthetic cutting oil were immersed into a cleaning solution for more than 72 hours and then backflushed by nitrogen gas.

• Journal of Korean Society on Water Environment
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• v.28 no.2
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• pp.269-276
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• 2012

The surface characteristics and performance of PTFE (polytetrafluoroethylene) hollow fiber membranes have been systematically investigated at lab- and pilot-scale to assess their application to membrane-bioreactor, particularly for integrating wastewater reclamation and rainwater harvesting. The PTFE membrane expressed some surface features, such as hydrophobicity, which might enhance membrane fouling. However, lab-scale performance and cleaning experiments under various conditions demonstrated that the PTFE membrane could produce the desirable water flux with good cleaning efficiency, implying easy operation and maintenance due to superior chemical resistance of PTFE membranes. Most of effluent water qualities were met with Korean standard for discharge and reuse, except color. Color level was further reduced by blending with rainwater at 75:25 ratio. Based on the lab-scale experimental results, the pilot plant was designed and operated. Pilot operation clearly showed sTable performance with satisfactory water quality, suggesting that PTFE membrane could be applied for decentralized MBR integrated with rainwater use.

• Clean Technology
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.151-156
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• 2006

Combined membrane process of ceramic microfiltration (MF) and polymer ultrafiltration (UF) was optimized for the removal of color and total organic carbon (TOC) from textile wastewater. Membrane regeneration was performed for the efficient operation by backflushing and chemical cleaning. Flux of 10.3% increased by the pulse backflushing of 1 second every 2 minutes in ceramic microfiltration. Membrane regeneration of 97% was obtained by chemical cleaning with 0.1% sodium hydroxide in polymer ultrafiltration. The removal efficiency of TOC, color and SS (suspended solid) were 84.6%, 97.4% and 100%, respectively. The combined process was found to be suitable for the removal of color and residual organics from textile wastewater.

• Journal of Korean Society of Environmental Engineers
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• v.28 no.2
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• pp.207-215
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• 2006

This study evaluated the effect of ultrasonic irradiation on reducing membrane fouling for the treatment of chemically treated leachate and biologically treated leachate. The experiments on improvement of membrane flux according to the membrane types(MF and UF) and membrane materials were performed with changing frequency(40 kHz and 120 kHz) and intensity(200 W and 400 W) of ultrasound in ultrasonic membrane separation apparatus which ultrasound can be periodically irradiated. Additionally, the effect of dual frequency ultrasound which 40 kHz md 120 kHz are irradiated simultaneously was evaluated. The improvement of membrane flux by periodical ultrasound irradiation was higher in microfiltration(MF) membrane than in ultrafiltration(UF) membrane. It was sustained more in the MF membrane of polyvinylidene fluoride(PVDF) than in that of polysulfon(PS). Ultrasonic improvement of membrane flux was different depending on the characteristics of target wastewater. It was sustainably maintained without reclogging using dual frequency ultrasound although the improvement of membrane flux was lower.

• Applied Chemistry for Engineering
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• v.3 no.4
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• pp.730-738
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• 1992

Filtration characteristics according to membrane materials were studied In the ultrafiltration of anaerobic digestion broth as a post treatment method. A series of resistances for different membranes were quantitatively assessed on the basis of the resistance-in-series model. Flux behavior observed with the digestion broth was irrelevant to initial water permeabilities of each membrane. The fluoro polymer membrane showed the most significant improvement of flux with increase of cross-flow velocity, which suggests that the cake layer formed on this membrane is more weakly attached to the membrane surface than those on the other membranes. Flux reduction during longtime running was attrib-used to the polarization layer resistance ($R_p$) as well as the fouling layer resistance($R_f$). Continuous increase of $R_p$ may reflect the variation in the characteristics of cake layers, which could result from size, shape, and structure changes due to lysis and growth of biomass. Hydrophilic cellulosic membrane had a much lower fouling tendency than hydrophobic polysulfone membrane. The depressurization method induced a small increase in flux of $5-10L/m^2/h$. During washing and cleaning, filtrability of each membrane was rapidly recovered within 15 minutes until a stationary value was reached.

• Membrane Journal
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.35-43
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• 2008

In this study, we tried to solve membrane fouling with membranes made by fine nano-particle in MBR process. And we confirmed good fouling resistance in pilot test. In this test, we confirmed our membrane with titania out-standing quality by testing in the pilot long-term test by comparing to other company product. Our membrane keep up steadily $20{\sim}25 L/m^2{\cdot}hr$ high flux in $7,000{\sim}13,000mg/L$ MLSS high sludge concentration. In addition to this quality, we studied membrane flux character related membrane arrangement, membrane-air line arrangement, air-line hole size, cleaning solution concentration, treatment method, etc. Using the optimization of this additional parameter, we tried to search method of maximizing membrane quality.