Comparison of different model solutions to simulate membrane fouling in the ultrafiltration of a secondary effluent from a municipal wastewater treatment plant

Abstract

The quality of the secondary treatment effluent from a Municipal Wastewater Treatment Plant is not good enough for some applications such as agriculture. Membrane ultrafiltration has been proven to be a reliable tertiary treatment to achieve the needed water quality. The productivity of the ultrafiltration processes depends on the membrane fouling. The aim of this work is to prepare a model wastewater that could mimic the fouling trend of a secondary treatment effluent wastewater from a Municipal Wastewater Treatment Plant. Several model wastewaters consisting of different proteins and carbohydrates were used in the ultrafiltration experiments. Ultrafiltration was also performed with a secondary treatment effluent. The membrane used in the ultrafiltration tests was a UFCM5 from Norit X-flow® hydrophilic polyethersulfone/polyvinylpyrrolidone blend hollow fiber ultrafiltration membrane of 200 KDa molecular weight cut-off with a fiber diameter of 1.5 mm. Membrane configuration was insideout. Ultrafiltration tests with model wastewater and secondary treatment effluent wastewater were compared. The results showed that the best model wastewater which represents the fouling trend of secondary treatment effluent wastewater is the model wastewater whose composition is 15 mg/l of bovine serum albumin and 5.5 mg/l of dextran.