Membrane Fouling Reduction in Drinking Water Treatment

Abstract

Two strategies are introduced to reduce the membrane fouling in the drinking water production by using ultrafil-tration hollow fiber membrane. One is to use the low fouling membrane with the hydrophilic cellulose acetate (CA)hollow fiber with high porous structure. Another is to use microbubbles as the pretreatment method for the ultrafil-tration of the river water. The permeate flux for the cellulose acetate membrane was much higher than that of thehydrophobic polyethersulfone membrane. Furthermore, the filtration flux of CA membrane was extremely enhancedby introducing microbubbles to the raw water during the filtration. The microbubbles were generated by pumpingthe raw water with air bubbles into a slit under high share stress. The effects of microbubbles on the flux were exam-ined at the various filtration conditions by using the pilot plant operations. The filtration fluxes were maintained tothe high values by the use of microbubbles in raw water during the filtration and were recovered even if the flux oncedecreased. The membrane filtration technology by using microbubbles can reduce the cost of the water treatmentand the energy consumption of the filtration operation.