Interactions between biofilms and NF/RO flux and their implications for control—A review of recent developments

The role of cell-surface interactions in bacterial initial adhesion and consequent biofilm formation on nanofiltration/reverse osmosis membranes

“…Biofouling remains a major operating problem in nanofiltration (NF) and reverse osmosis (RO) plants and is a topic that has been extensively documented in the literature [1][2][3][4][5][6]. Biofilms are at the core of the problem and their recalcitrance leads to performance loss and the use of significant quantities of cleaning chemicals.…”

Biofouling removal in spiral-wound nanofiltration elements using two-phase flow cleaning

“…The flux decline due to biofouling can be attributed to three mechanisms working at the same time [16,32]: (i) a reduction in the overall driving force due to the FCP increase, (ii) the increase in total resistance (R t ) due to an increased fouling resistance (R f ), and (iii) a reduction in the driving force for water transport due an increase in the osmotic pressure. The latter is also known as the biofilm-enhanced osmotic pressure or BEOP [33].…”

“…If the osmotic pressure offers a significant resistance to the flux (e.g. in RO), the presence of a biofilm layer on the membrane leads to an increase in solute concentrations at the membrane surface [32,33]. As shown in Eq.…”

Biofilm recruitment under nanofiltration conditions: the influence of resident biofilm structural parameters on planktonic cell invasion

“…Membrane fouling remains as the leading obstacle to the efficient operation of pressure-driven water filtration processes such as nanofiltration (NF) (Vrouwenvelder and van der Kooij, 2001;Gutman et al, 2012). The emergence of antifouling/antimicrobial (Mauter et al, 2011;Kroll et al, 2012;Liu et al, 2013;Seon et al, 2015) and non-biocidal antifouling membrane technologies, such as zwitterionic coatings (Bernstein et al, 2011;Wibisono et al, 2015) and hydrogel modifications (Zhao et al, 2014), is expected to play a major role in the effective management on the biofouling problem.…”