1. Title : Fouling Mitigations in Low Pressure-Driven Membrane Processes<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

2. Speaker : Prof. Jeonghwan Kim (Dept. of Environmental <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />Eng., Inha Univ.)

3. Date : April 5 (Mon), 5:00~6:15 P.M.

4. Venue : Building 302, Room 720

5.  Educational Background :

Ph.D. 2005 Environmental Sciences and Engineering

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA

M.E. 1998 Environmental Engineering, INHA University, Korea

B.S. 1994 Environmental Engineering, INHA University, Korea

6. Contact : Prof. Jyongsik Jang (☏880-7069)

7. Abstract

Membrane technologies to advance water and wastewater treatment have been growing rapidly in last 20 years. Membranes are effective tools to remove contaminants from feed water due to their absolute pore-size barrier and chemical properties. In contrast granular media filtration, low-pressure driven membranes such as microfiltration (MF) and ultrafiltration (UF) can be configured to provide high levels of pathogen removal and part of organic materials without dependence on chemical pretreatment. Furthermore, membrane processes have many advantages over conventional water and wastewater treatment processes because they require smaller footprint while providing higher quality of effluent (permeate).

Although there has been upsurge of interests in membrane technologies, their successful applications have been impeded mainly by membrane fouling caused by deposition of contaminants (foulants) on membrane surface and/or adsorption of them within membrane pores. Membrane fouling is great obstacle because it can increase hydraulic resistance of membrane during the period of operation and frequency of chemical cleaning, thus replacing new membrane eventually. Therefore, membrane fouling rejected by various foulant materials demand considerable attention by recognizing technical and cost issues that must be addressed. Research on membrane fouling progressed significantly to examine fouling mitigation strategies. Membrane fouling can be reduced by integrating external functions with membrane processes or fabricating built-in functions in membrane materials. Mitigation strategies produced great contributions on the effect of pretreatment such as coagulation, powdered activated carbon (PAC) and granular activated carbon (GAC), or membrane cleaning, permeate flux, backwash conditions, aeration rate (for submerged membrane design) on membrane fouling. Chemical modifications of membrane surface by grafting have proven to be feasible. Recent advances in nanotechnology research has resulted in the synthesis of a range of novel nanomaterials often possessing unique properties not only to mitigate membrane fouling but also to increase permeate water quality.

In this presentation, recent results describing fouling mitigations by applying external and built-in functions in low-pressure driven membranes will be shown with general overview of fouling mitigation mechanisms. The presentation will cover results mainly obtained from recent studies on (1) the effect of GAC fluidization on membrane fouling in submerged membrane treating effluent from anaerobic digester, (2) hybrid ozonation-ceramic membrane system to reduce membrane fouling caused by natural organic matters and (2) fabricating nanoparticles with membrane materials to mitigate membrane fouling in low-pressure driven membrane processes.