Forward osmosis treatment of effluents from dairy and automobile industry – results from short-term experiments to show general applicability

Abstract

Forward osmosis (FO) is a potential membrane technology to treat wastewater energy efficiently with low fouling. In laboratory-scale experiments, six effluents from a dairy and an automobile production plant were tested to find out if FO is an applicable treatment technology. Permeate flux and reverse salt flux were determined in nine test series with three subsequent 5 h experiments each. In between, the membrane was cleaned with deionized water. Membrane performance tests before each experiment were used to monitor membrane performance and fouling. Samples were analysed and the T/M-value was introduced to indicate which substances caused fouling. Dairy cheese brine was a suitable DS. Here, permeate fluxes were 21.0 and 15.1 L/(m²·h). Automobile cooling tower water and wastewater from cathodic dip painting were also used as DS. However, permeate fluxes were below 1.1 L/(m²·h). The tested FS, reverse osmosis concentrate from dairy wastewater treatment, rinsing water and wastewater from automobile cathodic dip painting, as well as wastewater from automobile paint shop pre-treatment, showed good performance regarding the permeate flux of between 7.9 and 19.4 L/(m²·h). Membrane performance test showed that some of the effluents lead to permeate flux reduction due to fouling. Different cleaning-in-place methods were examined. Eventually, permeate flux was restored.

Forward Osmosis Application in Manufacturing Industries: A Short Review

“…Another study investigated if RO concentrate from a dairy wastewater treatment plant was suitable as FS and if cheese brine could be used as DS in forward osmosis [ 115 ]. Dairy cheese brine proved to be a good DS: average permeate flux was 21.0 L/(m 2 ·h) with deionized water as FS.…”

“…Different wastewaters from car manufacturing industry were used for FO experiments [ 115 ]. The wastewaters were either used as FS or DS.…”

“…Cooling tower water from automobile industry was the DS in other FO experiments [ 115 ]. Here, deionized water and wastewater from paintshop pre-treatment were the corresponding FS producing only low average permeate fluxes of 1.1 and 0.1 L/(m 2 ·h), respectively.…”

Modelling Forward Osmosis Treatment of Automobile Wastewaters

“…Further decrease in permeate flux might be caused by membrane fouling. The detailed set-up has been described elsewhere [48].…”

Ressourceneffiziente Nutzung von Wasser in Anlagen zur Serienlackierung von Automobilkarosserien

“…Die VO ist ein Membrantrennverfahren, das in verschiedenen Fertigungsindustrien angewendet werden könnte . Haupt und Lerch haben hierzu bereits Laborversuche an Abwässern aus Lackieranlagen der Automobilindustrie vorgenommen.…”