Antifouling of RED, PRO and FO membranes (partners: UMA+DTU+CSM)
Long-term operation with minimal fouling and cleaning is a general prerequisite for costeffective membrane-based operations. Fouling can be mitigated by adjusting operation conditions (e.g. turbulence promoters, back-washing, forward flushing, and flow speed/direction); membrane morphology and coating; and chemical cleaning. The challenge is that fouling depends on the specific membrane application: organic fouling will behave differently from particulate fouling and yet again differently from biological fouling. For example RED fouling seems to be dominated by colloids (clay minerals), whereas fouling in SMBR also include soluble organics (e.g. microbial products) and inorganics (e.g. phosphate salts leading to struvite precipitates). Interestingly, some level of bio-fouling may be helpful to maintain long-term stable solute rejection albeit with lower water flux.
In WP4 we will investigate:
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the role of form-factor (hollow fiber versus flat sheet based modules) and application (i.e. RED, PRO, and FO SMBR) in the fouling process;
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how to design antifouling surfaces that are compatible with the biomimetic design (with reconstituted aquaporins and ion channels) and the specific application where we will focus on poly(ethylene glycol) PEG as building blocks for anti-fouling graft-components and seek to identify other polymers having H-bond acceptors, polar groups, and being electro-neutral, as these factors seem to imbue anti-fouling properties in general;
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develop a theoretical framework for relating experimental measurements (i.e. adhesion force measurements with atomic force microscopy, Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR), contact angle and Q-potential) to application-specific models for the fouling process.