Optimal design of membrane processes. A problem of choices between process layout, operating conditions and adopted control system

The development of membrane processes as a technology for environmental treatment applications and in particular for the purification of wastewater streams has significantly increased in the last decades. Fouling on membranes appears to be one of the main technical limit of this technology. This phenomenon causes the unavoidable deposition of particles on the membrane surface, building a resistive growing layer to permeability. Sensible fouling of the membrane leads to a significant reduction of the performances, a decrease of the operating life and, as a consequence, the increase of the operational costs due to the replacement or cleaning of the exhausted membrane modules. The presence of the fouling phenomena makes the proper design and control of membrane systems a difficult task. Optimal design of the membrane processes will be here discussed. The procedure requires to determine the optimal process layout given the input data and target requirements. At the end, the required membrane area is calculated. This latter property is strictly dependant of the adopted operating conditions, most importantly by the adopted value of transmembrane pressure (TMP). Moreover, it depends if the value of TMP remain fixed as a function of time or is variable (as in case of fixed permeate flow rates). Therefore, the optimal design of the system may occur only if the adopted control strategy is defined a priori. As a consequence, design choices of the membrane process layout, operating condition and adopted control system are strictly dependant, and connections between these different aspects should not be neglected during the engineering and P & I development stage of membrane systems. This paper will start from the theory of the boundary flux, in order to describe a novel design approach to membrane systems. Parallel to this, the development of an advanced control system, that allows to limit fouling formation during operation, is presented. The advanced control system relies on a suitable simulation software capable to predict the boundary flux, that changes the controller's set-points accordingly. Finally, the paper will merge all elements together, and report about the optimal design of membrane processes equipped with the advanced membrane process control system; validation of the proposed approach will be based on the use of a custom simulation model in ASPEN HYSYS and by experiments on lab scale

Optimization study of the fouling build-up on a RO membrane for pretrated olive mill wastewater purification

Even though membranes are considered in many aspects a mature technology, a range of features are still in development and under investigation. Regarding this, the main handicap of this technology is inevitably membrane fouling. Fouling issues have investigated by many research groups in the last years to convince investors to implement membranes as substitutes of a range of unit operations at industrial scale. In the wastewater treatment field, this is especially problematic, given the low economic value of the product, that is, treated water. On another hand, the management of the effluents generated by olive oil industries, olive mill wastewaters (OMW), is a task of global concern not anymore constrained to a specific region. These wastewaters represent an ever-increasing problem still unresolved. The present work was aimed for the modelling and optimization of a reverse osmosis (RO) membrane operation for the purification of pretreated olive mill wastewater, with a focus on the dynamic fouling development minimization on the selected membrane as a function of the set-up of the operating conditions. For this goal, beforehand a factorial design was implemented for the optimization of the RO treatment of the OMW stream. The results gathered were thereafter interpreted by means of the response surface methodology. A significant impact was noted to be driven by the operating pressure and the tangential velocity on the fouling rate on the RO membrane. The response surfaces withdrawn from the experimental data support the previous results, and the optimised parameters - ambient temperature range (24 - 25 °C), moderate operating pressure (25 - 30 bar) and turbulent tangential flow (3.1 - 3.5 m s -1 ) - were found to provide a stable permeate flux of 32.3 - 38.5 L h -1 m -2 . These results reveal the proposed process could be operated successfully at ambient temperature conditions and medium operating pressure, boosting the economic efficiency of the RO purification of this effluent. Finally, the parametric quality standards stablished to reuse the purified effluent for irrigation purposes were checked and found to be satisfactory

Chromium recovery by membranes for process reuse in the tannery industry

Leather tanning is a wide common industry all over the world. In leather processing, water is one of the most important medium, almost 40-45 L water kg-1 raw-hide or skin is used by tanneries for processing finished leathers. The composition of tannery wastewater presents considerable dissimilarities in the concentration range of pollutants both of inorganic (chlorides, with concentration ranging from several hundred to over 10,000 mg L-1 Cl–; sulphate (VI), ammonium ions and sulphide ions, exhibiting concentration that ranges from tens to several hundred mg L-1) and organic (the COD value is usually several thousand mg L-1 O2). Throughout the years, many conventional processes have been carried out to treat wastewater from tannery industry: unfortunately, in this case, biological treatment methods give rise to an excessive production of sludge, whereas physical and chemical methods are too expensive in terms of energy and reagent costs. In this work, a membrane process based on NF membrane modules was adopted to treat the tannery feedstock after primary conventional treatment. In a first step, the determination of all boundary flux parameters, in order to inhibit severe fouling formation during operation, were performed. After this, experimental work was carried out to validate the approach. The target of water purification was reached, that is the legal discharge to municipal sewer system in Italy of 90% of the initial wastewater stream volume. This allows having an immediate cost saving of 21%. Moreover, the developed process leads to a second benefit, that is the production of 5% of the initial volume as a highly chromium-rich concentrate at no cost suitable to tannery process recycle and reuse. In this case, cost saving rates exceeds 40%. At the end, scale-up of the investigated process will be discussed from technical and economic point of view