Effects of various chemical cleaning conditions for pressured MF process

Abstract

A pilot-scale pressured hollow-fiber microfiltration (MF) process as pretreatment for the reverse osmosis process was studied and operated under various conditions to assess the relative influence of backwashing, chemical enhanced backwashing (CEB), and bag filter application. The pilot plant process consisted of backwashing but without the CEB or the bag filter as the first step of the research. As the second step of the research, the impact of the backwashing on permeability recovery was assessed at different intervals followed by the influence of CEB on flowrate recovery. Results from operating the pilot-scale hollow-fiber membrane modules for more than 1 year have demonstrated that the appropriate pore size of bag filters was 25-50 μm and the optimized backwashing process was every 30 minutes with 25 mg/L of NaOCl, and CEB with an interval of 10 cycles with the use of 100 mg/L NaOCl.