Comparative analysis of performance and fouling characteristics of microfiltration and ultrafiltration polycarbonate membrane

Abstract

Seawater Reverse Osmosis is the most popular desalination technology for providing clean water. However, several problems in SWRO operations occurs, namely the decrease in membrane performance due to fouling. Fouling on the membrane is generally caused by high salinity and organic content in seawater. Therefore, pre-treatment technology is needed to improve water quality and reduce the workload of SWRO. This study aims to determine the suitable pre-treatment technology, by examining the removal efficiency of parameters in water using Ultrafiltration and microfiltration membranes. In this study, feed water was obtained from treated seawater. The experiment employed an average pore size of 0.01 micron polycarbonate track etched (PCTE) ultrafiltration membrane and 0.2 micron polycarbonate (PC) microfiltration membrane, respectively, with a dead-end filtration method and constant flux values at 60 L/m2.h and 120 L/m2.h. The choice of polycarbonate membrane is based on several advantages, such as high durability and chemical resistance. Water quality parameters such as turbidity, total dissolved solid (TDS), conductivity, dissolved oxygen (DO), organic substances (UV-Vis), and chemical oxygen demand (COD) were observed to determine the performance of each membrane types. The results showed that the operation of ultrafiltration membranes able to remove high amount of turbidity and COD with 88 ± 4 % and 86 ± 12 % removal percentage. Moreover, lesser removal efficiency was found for DO, TDS, UV-Vis and conductivity employing ultrafiltration membrane. In comparison to microfiltration, Ultrafiltration membrane was revealed as promising pretreatment for SWRO with higher retention of measured parameters and better membrane filtration performance.