This work is an experimental investigation of the effects of the operating conditions on the performance of a novel titanium‐based ceramic ultrafiltration membrane used to treat field produced water. To design the experiments and optimize the operating conditions, the Taguchi method was used to predict the optimal operating conditions. Under optimal conditions, an almost oil free permeation is obtained (98.93%) along with the removal of more than 99% for the total organic carbon (TOC), a high turbidity removal (99.82%) and a good salinity rejection for a UF membrane. The membrane was capable of treating a high steady flux of 441 L/m2 h with an overall flux decay of 28.6%. The Hermia’s cake formation model fitted the flux declining behaviour better than the three other associated models. Finally, four different techniques based on artificial intelligence (AI) methods were used to fit the flux declining behaviour. They seem to outperform the simple Hermiaˊs model for the modelling of oily water filtration.
The multicontinuum approach has been
developed to investigate the
filtration of oil-in-water emulsions using membrane technology. Although
the fate of individual oil droplets at the membrane surface is determined
by the balance of hydrodynamic forces in addition to the applied pressure,
such fates cannot be used to determine the overall macroscopic behavior
of the membrane. The fact that both the oil and the membrane represent
distributions of sizes highlights the idea that such size distributions
may be used to construct multiple continua for both the oil and the
membrane. Each oil continuum interacts with all membrane continua
according to the rules that determine the fate of each individual
droplet in each range. The need to validate this modeling approach
is essential to build confidence in the myriad results obtained by
this approach. For this reason, an experimental set up has been designed
and used to provide a verification framework to test the results obtained
by the multicontinuum approach and compare them with those measured.
Three types of membranes commonly used in the filtration of oily water
systems have been tested; JX-PVDF (Polyvinylidene difluoride, GE Osmonics),
PAN (GE Osmonics) and Polycarbonate track etch (PCTE) membranes. The
contact angle of oil droplets over the three tested membranes in a
water environment are 144°, 135°, and 101°, respectively.
The three membranes have nominal pore sizes of 0.3, 0.9, and 4.75
μm, respectively. Measurements of the rejection capacity of
the membrane were conducted. Comparisons of the measured rejection
capacities of the membranes and those calculated using the multicontinuum
approach under different conditions is similar thus validating the
multicontinuum theory of modeling.
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