Microbubble aeration enhances performance of vacuum membrane distillation desalination by alleviating membrane scaling

Understanding the fouling/scaling resistance of superhydrophobic/omniphobic membranes in membrane distillation

“…Turbulence can be generated via implementing specially designed spacers [164][165][166][167]. Microbubble aeration reinforces the surface shear to reduce polarization, but also alleviates scale precipitation due to aggregation of counter-ions at the gas-liquid interface of microbubbles [168]. Two 3D printed spacers based on triply periodic minimal surfaces (TPMS) architectures achieved 50 % higher flux and reduced crystal deposition than commercial spacers [164].…”

Scaling resistance by fluoro-treatments: the importance of wetting states

“…Furthermore, the additional nanofiltration system increases the cost of the whole treatment process. Recent use of process adjustment, such as feed pulse flow, 17,18 nanobubbles 19,20 or gas purging 21 have also demonstrated promise in scaling control. These process optimizations obey the fact that scaling occurs at the membrane-liquid interface, thus it is fundamentally an interfacial issue closely related to the physiochemical characteristics of the membrane materials and the interplay between the liquid and membrane surface.…”

Unprecedented scaling/fouling resistance of omniphobic polyvinylidene fluoride membrane with silica nanoparticle coated micropillars in direct contact membrane distillation

“…deposited fouling also induces nucleation or growth) [25], leading to progressive wetting and performance reduction [26]. Established fouling mechanisms unraveled a thermodynamic understanding of fouling phenomena, and provided a guidance on alleviating or eliminating fouling/scaling by process parameter [27,28] and membrane fabrication [17,19,[29][30][31][32][33].…”