A focused ultrasonic sensor for in situ detection of protein fouling on tubular ultrafiltration membranes

On the usage of acoustic properties combined with an artificial neural network – A new approach of determining presence of dairy fouling

“…In food processes, it has been applied to monitor sucrose and ethanol concentration (Resa et al, 2005;Schoeck et al, 2010) and to detect foreign bodies (Haeggström and Luukkala, 2001;Leemans and Destain, 2009). Ultrasound has been used to detect membrane fouling (Li et al, 2006;Marselina et al, 2009) and Withers (1994) employed it to measure fouling thickness. In this paper, acoustic parameters which are sensitive to changes on heat transfer area are chosen.…”

A new view of membrane fouling with 3D ultrasonic imaging techniques: Taking the canola oil with phospholipids for example

“…Once the filtration surface is larger than the acoustic sensor, there is no constraint for the filtration module. For example this technique has a diverse applicability for different types of module, including flat plate [7,8], tubular feature [10] and even hollow fibers [11]. This technique can also be applied on various materials which do not need to be transparent.…”

“…Mendret et al also pointed out that it was very difficult to obtain information about the deposit unless the signal of the deposit can be separated from the measured signal [14]. Because this trade-off is unavoidable presently, it is expected that only ultrasonic wave curve variations have been shown for different times of filtration in the sequential series work of Li et al using the UTDR technique [9][10][11]. It should be noted that, to our best knowledge, all those reported works on membrane fouling monitoring using the acoustic signal cannot provide any direct or visualized images for the membrane fouling, let alone the comparable ultrasonic images of the fouled membrane structure with that obtained by SEM.…”

Biofouling potential of industrial fermentation broth components during microfiltration

“…Ultrasonic time-domain reflectometry (UTDR) has been employed to monitor particle deposition and cake formation in situ, to determine the thickness of cake "layers" formed during cross-flow microfiltration of papermill effluent with nylon membranes [21], as well as monitor ultrafiltration of papermill effluent using polysulfone membranes [22]. UTDR has also been successfully used to detect protein fouling on tubular UF membranes [23].…”