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Abstract
In this study, a ceramic microfiltration membrane was examined as a pretreatment of reverse osmosis (RO) process for seawater desalination. The performance of ceramic membrane with and without coagulant were compared in terms of permeate qualities and transmembrane pressure (TMP). Various parameters were analyzed, such as turbidity, dissolved organic carbon (DOC), UV254, SDI15 (silt density index), and TMP. When ceramic membrane system was operated without coagulation at flux 2 m3/m2 d, SDI15 value and turbidity of permeate water was less than 3 and 0.1 NTU, respectively. However, SDI15 and turbidity were reduced to 0.9 and 0.076 NTU, respectively, when coagulant of 6 mg/L was applied. The comparison of TMP on different membrane flux was controlled flux 2 and 5, 10 m3/m2 d with and without coagulation. The increase of TMP was significantly mitigated from 90 to 13.8 kPa at flux 5 m3/m2 d, from 87.4 to 21.5 kPa at flux 10 m3/m2 d, respectively, by coagulation followed by filtration. Ceramic MF system with coagulation showed more stable TMP behaviour than ceramic membrane without coagulation. The experimental results described that the membrane fouling was mainly caused by particulate matters which were flocculated and removed by coagulation, resulted in less formation of the cake layer. In terms of SDI15, the value decreased significantly to 0.9 when the membrane system was operated with coagulation although the value of SDI15 showed 2.7 when operated without coagulation. Also, DOC and UV254 of ceramic MF with coagulation were reduced to 2.5 and 0.01 from 3.0 and 0.24 for filtration only. This study confirmed the effect of coagulation of ceramic MF for seawater desalination pretreatment. Ceramic membrane can be a competitive pretreatment process for desalination using RO in terms of its higher flux and more stable operation characteristics than common organic membrane systems.
Acknowledgement
This research was supported by the grant of National Research Foundation in Korea (NRF-2015R1D1A1A01058560).
Notes
Presented at the 8th International Desalination Workshop (IDW) 2015, November 18–21, 2015, Jeju Island, Korea