Fouling Identification for Nanofiltration of Whey: Resistance-in-series Model

Nowadays, the application of membrane technology in the various separation industries has become popular due to the numerous advantages, such as high efficiency and energy sustainability. However, the performance of this technology has been greatly limited by membrane fouling. This paper focused on demonstrating the impacts of Fum nanoparticle incorporation into PES membrane on fouling mechanism using Resistance-in-series model. In this regard, two types of pure PES and asymmetric nanocomposite membranes fabricated via phase inversion method were examined using whey as a model foulant. Obtained results showed that the addition of Fum nanoparticles in the polymeric mixture greatly improved antifouling characteristics of the membranes. The total fouling resistance decreased from 9 69.77 10 m-1 for PES membrane to 9 42.86 10 m-1 for nanocomposite membranes containing 2 wt. % of Fum nanoparticles. Obtained results demonstrated that the irreversible fouling resistance in the pure membrane was almost 8 times greater than that in the modified membranes. Also the magnitude of / itRRratio was considerably decreased from 0.18 to 0.04 in the nanocomposite membrane. The pure PES also exhibited relatively high cake resistance. It might be due to the strong interactions between hydrophobic chains in PES membrane surface and hydrophobic chains in whey molecules. The resistance of this solid cake build-up on the membrane surface was also greatly influenced by addition of nanoparticles. However, comparing the results showed that, in both cases, cake deposition was the dominant fouling mechanism. That is to say, addition of Fum nanoparticles without switching the dominant fouling mechanism, changed the nature and characteristic of the solid cake.

Keywords:

Membrane technology , Energy sustainability , Fouling , Resistance-in-series model , Fum nanoparticles , solid cake