International audienceIn order to study the effect of cleaning operations on polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) hollow fiber membrane stability, ageing of two PVDF based membranes (one is additive free, the other contains hydrophilic additives) in contact with sodium hypochlorite solutions with various pH values has been studied. The aim of this experimental study was to identify the degradation mechanisms and to gain a better understanding of the effect of the (macro)molecular structure changes on the mechanical and functional properties of the membranes. In both membranes, double bond formation, chain scission and crosslinking are observed and all these processes (except crosslinking) are faster in acidified solutions than in natural NaOCl solutions (pH 11.5). It can be deduced that if ionic processes such as dehydrofluorination occur, radical processes resulting from the presence of hypochlorous acid and perhaps its coexistence with the ClO− ion, predominate in acidified solutions. The presence of non-fluorinated aliphatic or cycloaliphatic additives, which are highly reactive with bleach, accelerates chain scission at the expense of crosslinking. In the chosen conditions (135 days in 4000 ppm bleach solutions at 40 °C), PVDF chains are degraded but not enough to induce polymer embrittlement. While in the additive free membrane no significant change of the use properties has been observed, the polymeric additives of the other membrane are completely destroyed, leading to a decrease of the membrane hydrophilicity, but their destruction improves the membrane selectivity by a decrease of the average porosity
Pre-treatment of seawater feeding reverse osmosis (RO) membranes is a key step in designing desalination plants, especially when treating surface seawater with highly variable quality. The objective of the study was to assess the potential of ultrafiltration (UF) pre-treatment prior to RO for desalting seawater with high-fouling tendency. A UF pilot plant equipped with an Aquasource membrane was directly operated on Gibraltar surface seawater in dead-end mode. The competitiveness of UF pre-treatment towards conventional pre-treatment was assessed by looking at the impact on RO hydraulic performances. The study showed that UF provided permeate water with higher quality than with a conventional pre-treatment. The main seawater compounds responsible for UF fouling were organic matter released by phytoplanktonic organisms. The combination of UF with a pre-coagulation at low dose helped in controlling this fouling and providing water in steady state conditions. The performance of RO membranes downstream of UF exceeded the usual operating conditions encountered in seawater desalination. The combined effect of higher recovery and higher flux rate promises to significantly reduce the RO plant costs.
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