• 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.

• Proceedings of the Membrane Society of Korea Conference
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• 1998.04a
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• pp.124-126
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• 1998

1. INTRODUCTION : With good physical and chemical properties as a membrane material, poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) has been widely used for the preparation of several kinds of membranes for different applications. Considering such good physical chemical properties, some people have tried to use it for the formation of reverse osmosis (RO) membranes with a good chemical stability as well as high flux and high rejection rate. However, unfortunately, the performance of the RO membranes based on PVA has not been satisfactory yet. The PVA RO membranes thermally crosslinked have shown very low flux and relatively low salt rejection. In this experiment, ionic polymers such as sodium alginate and chitosan were used together with PVA to increase the nanofiltration performance of the PVA membranes.

• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.47-52
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• 2005

This study was conducted to evaluate the performance of submerged hollow fiber MF processes to treat secondary wastewater for water reuse. Specifically, membrane productivity and filtrate water quality were investigated under various operating conditions (i.e. flux, recovery, and backwash rate) at pilot-scale. Membrane fouling became more severe with increasing flux and recovery, suggesting that low flux operation (< 25 LMH) was desirable. At high flux operating(> 37.5 LMH), increasing backwash rate showed only limited success. The biofouling, quantified by PEPA and BFHPC, was also significant in wastewater reclamation, and biogrowth control by chlorine, were necessary to improve membrane productivity. Filtrate water qualities are in good compliance with water reuse regulations regardless of operating conditions (flux, recovery and backwash rate). Particle (e.g. turbidity) removal ranged from 89 to 98%, while only 11 to 21% of organics (e.g. NPDOC) were removed by MF membrane. Only small improvement in biostability (e.g. AOC) was achieved by MF system, and thus, without post disinfection, significant microorganisms might be present in the filtrate due to regrowth. Lastly, in order to further investigate pathogen removal, controlled microbial challenge tests were performed by monitoring Giardia, Cryptosporidium, bacteria and virus, and showed relatively good microbial removal.

• Membrane and Water Treatment
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.101-113
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• 2016

In this study, to improve the water flux of porous hydrophobic membranes, various water-soluble polymers including neutral, cationic and anionic polymers were adsorbed using 'salting-out' method. The adsorbed hydrophobic membrane surfaces were characterized mainly via the measurements of contact angles and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) images. To enhance the durability of the modified membranes, the water-soluble polymers such poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) were crosslinked with glutaraldehyde (GA) and found to be resistant for more than 2 months in vigorously stirred water. The water flux was much more increased when the ionic polymers used as the coating materials rather than the neutral polymer and in this case, about 70% of $0.31L/m^2{\cdot}h$ (LMH) to 0.50 LMH was increased when 300 mg/L of polyacrylamide (PAAm) was used as the coating agents. Among the cationic coating polymers such as poly(styrene sulfonic acid-co-maleic acid) (PSSA_MA), poly(acrylic acid-comaleic acid) (PAM) and poly(acrylic acid) (PAA), PSSA_MA was found to be the best in terms of contact angle and water flux. In the case of PSSA_MA, the water flux was enhanced about 80%. The low concentration of the coating solution was better to hydrophilize while the high concentration inclined to block the pores on the membrane surfaces. The best coating condition was found: (1) coating concentration 150 to 300 mg/L, (2) ionic strength 0.15, (3) coating time 20 min.

• Clean Technology
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.69-78
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• 1999

Separation characteristics of cutting oil-in-water emulsions were studied experimentally by using various kinds of flat-type microfiltration and ultrafiltration membranes. For ultrafiltration membranes the permeation behavior of cutting oil emulsions obeys the film model, whereas a significant deviation from the model was observed for ASYPOR microfiltration membranes. The experimental data obtained for all the membranes showed that the effect of operating pressure on the permeation flux of oil-in-water emulsions is not very significant. At low transmembrane pressures the permeation flux decreased gradually with increasing filtration time, whereas the permeation flux at high transmembrane pressures decreased steeply for early filtration time. However, every flux eventually reached a constant value that depends only on the applied transmembrane pressure. For the hydrophobic polycarbonate microfiltration membrane the permeation flux increased with the filtration time. The critical permeation pressures were also determined from the data obtained from unstirred cell experiments.

• Membrane and Water Treatment
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.109-122
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• 2014

Polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) hollow fiber membrane is widely used for water treatment. However, the weak mechanical strength of PVDF limits its application. To enhance its tensile strength, a double-layer composite hollow fiber membrane, with PVDF and polyetherimide as the external and inner layers, respectively, was successfully prepared through phase inversion technique. The effects of additive content, air gap distance, N,N-dimethyl-acetamide content in the inner core liquid, and the temperature of external coagulation bath on the membrane structure, permeation flux, rejection, tensile strength, and porosity were determined. Experimental results showed that the optimum preparation conditions for the double-layer composite hollow fiber membrane were as follows: PEG-400 and PEG-600, 5 wt%; air gap distance, 10 cm; inner core liquid and the external coagulation bath should be water; and temperature of the external coagulation bath, 40 C. A single layer PVDF hollow fiber membrane (without PEI layer) was also prepared under optimum conditions. The double-layer composite membrane remarkably improved the tensile strength compared with the single-layer PVDF hollow fiber membrane. The permeation flux, rejection, and porosity were also slightly enhanced. High-tensile strength hollow fiber PVDF ultrafiltration membrane can be fabricated using the proposed technique.

• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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• v.26 no.6
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• pp.807-813
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• 2012

Flocculation and flotation are used as pretreatment steps prior to the reverse osmosis (RO) process. During seawater treatment, high temperature can change the water chemistry of seawater during the process of coagulation. It also affects bubble volume concentration (BVC) and bubble characteristics. Coagulants such as alum and ferric salts at $40^{\circ}C$ can also change flux rates in the seawater reverse osmosis (SWRO) process. In this study, the bubble characteristics in dissolved air flotation (DAF), used as a SWRO pretreatment process, were studied in synthetic seawater at $20^{\circ}C$ and $40^{\circ}C$. The flux of an RO membrane was monitored after dosing the synthetic seawater with coagulants at different temperatures. Results showed that BVC increases as the operating pressure increases and as the salt concentration decreases. The bubble size released at $40^{\circ}C$ is far smaller than that at $20^{\circ}C$The addition of a ferric salt is effective for turbidity removal in synthetic seawater at $20^{\circ}C$; it is more effective than alum. When synthetic seawater was dosed with a ferric salt, the RO membrane flux increased by 27 % at $40^{\circ}C$.

• Membrane Journal
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• v.28 no.1
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• pp.75-82
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• 2018

Forward osmosis (FO) desalination system has been highlighted to improve the energy efficiency and drive down the carbon footprint of current reverse osmosis (RO) desalination technology. To improve the trade-off between water flux and salt rejection of thin film composite (TFC) desalination membrane, thin film nanocomposite membranes (TFN), in which nanomaterials as a filler are embeded within a polymeric matrix, are being explored to tailor the separation performance and add new functionality to membranes for water purification applications. The objective of this article is to develop a graphene nanocomposite membrane with high performance of water selective permeability (high water flux, high salt rejection, and low reverse solute diffusion) as a next-generation FO desalination membrane. For advances in fabrication of graphene oxide (GO) membranes, layer-by-layer (LBL) technique was used to control the desirable structure, alignment, and chemical functionality that can lead to ultrahigh-permeability membranes due to highly selective transport of water molecules. In this study, the GO nanocomposite membrane fabricated by LBL dip coating method showed high water flux ($J_w/{\Delta}{\pi}=2.51LMH/bar$), water selectivity ($J_w/J_s=8.3L/g$), and salt rejection (99.5%) as well as high stability in aqueous solution and under FO operation condition.

• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.42-49
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• 1998

By checking the variations of the raw water quality and MLSS, the effects of the membrane materials on permeable flux and quality of the treated water were investigated in this study. Due to the stability for high variations of MLSS, tubular type membranes were selected. Polysulfone group membranes and polyamide group membranes were tested. The crossflow operation mode was adapted, because membrane fouling problems could be easily controlled by adjusting the linear velocity. Due to the high concentration of the raw water, polyamide group membranes were originally expected to achieve two times higher permeable fluxes. However, difference was only approximately $20l/m^2{\cdot}h$ at $3kgf/cm^2$. It might be resulted from the high concentration of organic materials in the effluent of the RBC process. For the quality of the treated water, polyamide group membranes were slightly less effective. It might be resulted from the fact that polysulfone group membranes had more adsorptive capacities for the organic materials. The effects of temperature on the permeable flux were found to be significant. Despite of the irregular injection of raw water, the quality of the treated water was kept stable.

• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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• v.22 no.5
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• pp.517-522
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• 2008

This study aims at an assessment of the effectiveness of taste & odor removal and transmembrane pressure changes in a pilot membrane plant(500m3/day) by adding PAC to MF process, and at providing a basis for applying it to the advanced water treatment process. The transmembrane pressure showed, in low turbidity of raw water, a tendency to decrease when PAC was injected at the Flux of 1, $1.5m^3/m^2{\cdot}d$, while it increased in high Flux($1.5m^3/m^2{\cdot}d$) in high turbidity of raw water. in addtion, it is shown that the fouling could be reduced more when PAC is injected together with appropriate amount of coagulant, than when PAC is solely injected. Taste & Odor-causing 2-MIB may not be detected in membrane filtered water, if the amount of PAC injection is increased in accordance with the increasing concentration of 2-MIB. Hence, PAC injection, as a pre-treatment process in MF membrane filtering, is supposed to be a suitable process for reducing fouling as well as for improvement effectiveness of taste & odor treatment.