Reducing Membrane Fouling During Microalgae Filtration Using a Uniform Shearing Vibration Membrane with Intermittent Operation
摘要
Uniform shearing vibration membranes (USVMs) represent a new technology to effectively control membrane fouling. Its intermittent operation reduces reversible and irreversible fouling. Frequent relaxation intervals, even with the same filtration-to-relaxation ratio, enhance results by mitigating concentration polarization and fouling. In this study, membranes operated with 9-min filtration with a 1-min interval outperformed those with 54-min filtration with a 6-min interval and continuous filtration. After a 12-h filtration experiment, the transmembrane pressure increase for the 9-min/1-min group was only 0.6 kPa, compared to 2 kPa for continuous filtration—a 330% higher increase. The reversible fouling rate (RF), irreversible fouling rate (IF) and total fouling rate (TF) were 31.1%, 25.4% and 56.5% for the continuous filtration group, 17.5%, 16.9% and 34.3% for the 9-min/1-min group, and 27.5%, 21.6%, 49.1% for the 54-min/6-min group. Compared with continuous filtration, the 9-min/1-min group interval reduced RF and IF by 43.7% and 33.3%, showing the lowest fouling among the three groups. Additionally, membrane-attached algal cells, proteins, polysaccharides, and humic acids decreased with increasing relaxation intervals for both reversibly and irreversibly attached extracellular organic matter.