Analysis of Polyether sulfone (PES) membrane Fouling Relying on Experimental Observation

The use of membrane technology is widely increasing in water and wastewater treatment. A common problem with using membranes is fouling, which results in increasing operating costs. Natural organic matter fouling is a critical factor controlling the performance of membrane systems such as ultrafiltration membranes. For using of polyether sulfone (PES) membranes in landfilled leachate treatment processes, the PES ultrafiltration membranes were fabricated by phase inversion method. In order to investigation the effects of operating conditions on fouling phenomenon, landfilled leachate treatment was done at 5 bar transmembrane pressure and raw, 10times diluted and 20 times diluted leachate as a feed. Flux declinedata were obtained for the filtration of landfilled leachate with the PES membrane at these set of experiments. The rates of flux decline were drastically dropped to about 46-48% of the initial values in the first 30 minutes of experiment at all the examined pressures.The initial fouling due to pore blockage is related to the feed concentration at constant pressure; so that by diluting the feed concentration, the effect of pore blocking was increased.

Keywords:

Fouling Behavior , PES Ultrafiltration Membrane , Leachate Treatment , Operating Conditions