Wednesday, November 7, 2007 - 12:30 PM
424a

Development of a Hybrid System to Improve the Anti-Fouling Performance of the Uf Membrane during the Specific Industrial Wastewater Treatment

Xi Wei, Hydrochem (S) Pte Ltd, a Hyflux Group Compan, 202 Kallang Bahru, Singapore 339339, Singapore, Singapore and Tai-Shung Chung, Chemical and biomolecular Engineering, National university of Singapore, 10 Kent Ridge Crescent, Singapore 119260, Singapore, Singapore.

Various foulants present in the industrial wastewater and affect the UF membrane filtration performance. To improve the UF membrane anti-fouling performance, it is important to get rid of the major foulants before the UF membrane filtration. In this study, an UF membrane which was the Hyflux newly developed UF Kristal 600 membrane was applied to three kinds of industry wastewater: the pulp and paper wastewater, the second effluent of industrial water and the mixture of sea water and biological wastewater. The Characteristics of these industrial wastewaters will be given during the presentation. The bacterial, organic matter and multivalent ions were the main foulants presented in these wastewaters, different in concentrations. As a result, this wastewater exhibited serious fouling tendency. The objectives of this study were 1) to filtrate the wastewater by means of the Hyflux newly developed UF Kristal 600 membranes and to specify the main foulants during the filtration, 2) to optimize the operating parameters to provide an efficient filtration process, and 3) to develop a hybrid system to prevent the high membrane fouling tendency and keep the UF membrane perform better anti-fouling performance. To achieve these targets, a pilot testing system was built on-site, and the membrane fouling studied was reported in this paper. It was found that bio-fouling and organic fouling were the main factors to affect the cake layer formation during the UF filtration process. To prevent this kind of fouling action occurred, the UF operating parameters were optimized and a hybrid system was set up. The foulants were removed step by step during the hybrid system and the whole system performed to produce quality water to the RO system at a high flow rate. It has been proved that a right filtration system could keep the UF membrane exhibit higher filtration performance constantly.