Preliminary experiments on UF pretreatment for SWRO

Abstract

In this study, unlike the previous researches, the pretreatment equipment composed of a 40-m disk filter and a hollow fiber ultra-filtration (UF) membrane was constructed. The performances of the pretreatment facilities were analyzed on the basis of 5-week-long continuous experiments using sea water. The results confirmed that the newly constructed pretreatment equipment could be used for the pretreatment of sea water reverse osmosis as evidenced by silt density index(15) values below two for a long period and measured turbidities of about 0.4 NTU. The membrane fouling could be removed by using chemical enhanced backwash. Trans-membrane pressure and the permeability could be returned to the initial conditions. It reveals that UF membrane performances of the pretreatment were dependent on the sea water conditions and operating conditions.