• Membrane and Water Treatment
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.1-10
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• 2016

Ultrafiltration is known to be one of the most commonly applied techniques in water treatment. Membrane fouling is the main limiting factor in terms of process efficiency and restricting it to the manageable degree is crucial. Natural organic matter is often found to be a major foulant in surface waters. Among many known fouling prevention techniques, the membrane chemical cleaning is widely employed. This study focuses on evaluating the cleaning efficiency of polymeric and ceramic membranes with the use of various chemicals. The influence of cleaning agent type and its concentration, membrane material and its MWCO, and cleaning process duration on the recovery of membrane flux was analyzed. Results have shown that, regardless of membrane type and MWCO, the most effective cleaning agent was NaOH.

• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.93-101
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• 2010

Reverse osmosis (RO) membranes have been widely used for desalination as well as water and wastewater treatment facilities. Cleaning process is important to maintain stable operation as well as prevention of membrane fouling. Purpose of this research is to analyze electrostatistic and chemical characteristics after cleaning of RO membrane against $SiO_2$ scale. Four RO membranes of polyamide are used and examined about effect of chemical cleaning. EDTA (ethylene diamine tetraacetic acid) and SDS (sodium dodecil sulfate) and NaOH are applied for cleaning process after operation in synthetic water. Then, cleaning was performed with chemicals such concentration as 6hr, 12hr and 24hr, respectively. As a result, transmittances of FT-IR of four membranes are compared at each cleaning concentration. Ta/Tv shows difference of chemical composition between new membrane and cleaning membrane after cleaning. Type B of RO membrane is turned out to be most vulnerable to cleaning among four membranes. In terms of zeta potential, new membrane has -16 mV to +6 mV on pH while scaled membrane has -18 mV to 2 mV. However, it changed -23mV to 0.9 mV after cleaning. In comparison with existing salt rejection of RO membranes after cleaning, the rejection of the membranes goes down 0.7% maximum. Though cleaning changes the characteristics of membrane surface, it does not greatly affect salt rejection. pH is a critical factor to flux change in PA (polyamide) membrane.

• Membrane and Water Treatment
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.141-160
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• 2015

This study aims to investigate the impacts of chemical cleaning on the performance of a reverse osmosis membrane. Chemicals used for simulating membrane cleaning include a surfactant (sodium dodecyl sulfate, SDS), a chelating agent (ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid, EDTA), and two proprietary cleaning formulations namely MC3 and MC11. The impact of sequential exposure to multiple membrane cleaning solutions was also examined. Water permeability and the rejection of boron and sodium were investigated under various water fluxes, temperatures and feedwater pH. Changes in the membrane performance were systematically explained based on the changes in the charge density, hydrophobicity and chemical structure of the membrane surface. The experimental results show that membrane cleaning can significantly alter the hydrophobicity and water permeability of the membrane; however, its impacts on the rejections of boron and sodium are marginal. Although the presence of surfactant or chelating agent may cause decreases in the rejection, solution pH is the key factor responsible for the loss of membrane separation and changes in the surface properties. The impact of solution pH on the water permeability can be reversed by applying a subsequent cleaning with the opposite pH condition. Nevertheless, the impacts of solution pH on boron and sodium rejections are irreversible in most cases.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.52 no.3
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• pp.581-588
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• 2020

The membrane fouling is an important problem for FO applied to the radioactive wastewater treatment. The FO fouling characteristics for simulated radioactive wastewater treatment was investigated. On-line cleaning by deionized (DI) water and external cleaning by ultrasound and HCl were applied for the fouled membrane. The effectiveness and foulant removing amount by each-step cleaning were evaluated. The membrane fouling was divided into three stages. Co(II), Sr(II), Cs(I), Na(I) were all found deposited on both active and support layers of the membrane surface, resulting in membrane surface became rougher and more hydrophobic, which increased membrane resistance. On-line cleaning by DI water recovered the water flux to 69%. HCl removed more foulants than ultrasound.

• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.285-291
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• 2011

Membrane fouling is an unavoidable phenomenon and major obstacle in the economic and efficient operation under sea water reverse osmosis (SWRO). When fouling occurs on the membrane surface, the permeate quantity and quality decrease, the trans-membrane pressure (TMP) and operation costs increase, and the membrane may be damaged. Therefore, chemical cleaning process is important to prevent permeate flow from decreasing in RO membrane filtration process. This study focused on proper chemical cleaning condition for Shuaibah RO plant in Saudi Arabia. Several chemical agents were used for chemical cleaning at different contact time and concentrations of chemicals. Also autopsy analysis was performed using LOI, FT-IR, FEEM, SEM and EDX for assessment of fouling. Specially, FEEM analysis method was thought as analyzing and evaluating tool available for selection of the first applied chemical cleaning dose to predict potential organic fouling. Also, cleaning time should be considered by the condition of RO membrane process since the cleaning time depends on the membrane fouling rate. If the fouling exceeds chemical cleaning guideline, to perfectly remove the fouling, certainly, the chemical cleaning is increased with membrane fouling rate influenced by raw water properties, pre-treatment condition and the point of the chemical cleaning operation time. Also choice of cleaning chemicals applied firstly is important.

• Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.45-51
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• 2016

Membrane bioreactor (MBR) and reverse osmosis (RO) membrane system was applied to the treatment and reclamation of textile wastewater in Thailand. An experiment was carried out to determine the fouling behavior and effect of anti-scalant and biocide addition to flux decline and its recovery through chemical cleaning. The RO unit was operated for one month after which the fouled membranes were cleaned by sequential chemical cleaning method. RO flux was found rapidly declined during initial period and only slightly decreased further in long-term operation. The main foulants were organic compounds and thus sequential cleaning using alkaline solution followed by acid solution was found to be the most effective method. The provision of anti-scalant and biocide in feed-water could not prevent deposition of foulant on the membrane surface but helped improving the membrane cleaning efficiencies.

• Membrane and Water Treatment
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.65-73
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• 2021

Sponge ball cleaning can generate an abrasion effect, which leads to an attractive increasing in both permeate flux and membrane rejection. The aim of this study was to investigate the influence of the daily sponge ball cleaning (SBC) on the performance of different UF cross-flow membrane modules integrated with a bioreactor. Two 1"-membrane modules and one 1/2"-membrane module were tested. The parameters measured and controlled are temperature, pH, viscosity, particle size, dissolved organic carbon (DOC), total suspended solids (TSS), and permeate flux. The permeate flux could be improved by 60%, for some modules, after 11 days of daily sponge ball cleaning at a transmembrane pressure of 350 kPa and a flow velocity of 4 m/s. Rejection values of all tested modules were improved by 10%. The highest permeate flux of 195 L/㎡.h was achieved using a 1"-membrane module with the aid of its negatively charged membrane material and the daily sponge ball cleaning. In addition, the enhancement in the permeate flux caused by daily sponge ball cleaning improved the energy specific demand for all tested modules. The negatively charged membrane showed the lowest energy specific demand of 1.31 kWh/㎥ in combination with the highest flux, which is a very competitive result.

• Membrane Journal
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• v.27 no.6
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• pp.519-527
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• 2017

Membrane fouling is the main issue hindering the expansion of low pressure membrane processes for surface water treatment. Therefore, applying periodic hydraulic cleaning for fouling control should be well optimized. Better understanding of membrane fouling associated with periodic hydraulic cleaning would be useful to optimize membrane cleaning strategies. By comparing experimental permeability data with the classical Hermia blocking laws, this study aims at analyzing membrane fouling and understanding dominant fouling mechanisms occurring when filtering a synthetic surface water solution with a pressurized membrane process during six filtration cycles of 30 min each, separated with cyclic cleaning of 1 min by backwashing and forward flushing separately and combined. When applying single cleaning technique, membrane fouling during the first cycles was controlled by complete blocking mechanism while the last cycles were dominated by cake formation. Nevertheless, when combining cleaning technique better membrane regeneration was obtained and fouling was mainly due to cake formation.

• Membrane and Water Treatment
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.113-123
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• 2017

This study investigated effects of physical and chemical cleaning methods on the initial flux recovery of fouled membrane in membrane distillation process. A laboratory scale direct contact membrane distillation (DCMD) experiment was performed to treat digested livestock wastewater with 3.89 mg/L suspended solids, 874.7 mg/L COD, 543.7 mg/L nitrogen, 15.6 mg/L total phosphorus, and pH of 8.6. A hydrophobic PVDF membrane with an average pore size of $0.22{\mu}m$ and a porosity of 75 % was installed inside a direct contact type membrane distillation module. The temperature difference between feed and permeate side was maintained at $40^{\circ}C$ with the feed and permeate stream velocity of 0.18 m/s. The results showed that the permeate flux decreased from $22.1L{\cdot}m^{-2}{\cdot}hr^{-1}$ to $19.0L{\cdot}m^{-2}{\cdot}hr^{-1}$ after 75 hours of distillation. The fouled membrane was cleaned first by physical flushing and consecutively by chemicals with NaOCl and citric acid. After the physical cleaning the flux was recovered to 92 % as compared with the initial clean water flux of the virgin membrane. Then 94 % of the flux was recovered after cleaning by 2,000 ppm NaOCl for 90 minutes and finally 97 % of flux recovered after 3 % citric acid for 90 minutes. SEM-EDS and FT-IR analysis results presented that the foulants on the membrane surface were removed effectively after each cleaning step. The contact angle measurement showed that the hydrophobicity of the membrane surface was also restored gradually after each cleaning step to reach nearly the same hydrophobicity level as the virgin membrane.

• Korean Membrane Journal
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.60-63
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• 2000

The effect of Candida rugosa and steapsin lipase cleaning was investigated for ultrafiltration polyethersulphone membrane (30,000 dalton MWCO) fouled with the semi-synthetic type cutting oil. The experimental by the water circulator. The enzyme cleaning effect was measured with respect to temperature, cleaning time and enzyme concentration. The optimum cleaning condition for the system was 25$^{\circ}C$ and 2 hour cleaning with 1,000 unites/mL steapsin solution. The pure water flux improvement by the steapsin solution cleaning was about 17% at the optimum cleaning condition.