[Membrane fouling mechanism and control strategy for the pilot-scale submerged PVC-UF membrane process]

In this paper, Lujing water supply plant in Jiangsu was selected to carry out the investigation in order to understand the constitutes of the membrane fouling, comment on the membrane cleaning methods and obtain the proper cleaning sequences. In the experiments, water quality of the raw water was measured; membrane characteristics of the plant and membrane cleaning methods were thoroughly analyzed. The results indicated that the hydrophobic acids (HOA) and hydrophilic matters (HIM) are the major components in the raw water, 40.34% and 28.48% respectively in mass fraction. EEM's results also demonstrated that aromatic protein II are the main constitutes in the DOMs. In addition, the turbidity can reach around 0.1 NTU and the DOM can be removed partially by the PVC-UF membrane process during the water production. The constitutes of those emulations demonstrated that inorganic ions and NOM were both contributed to the membrane fouling. Ca and Si were the major inorganic contributors; aromatic protein II, SMP and fulvic acid were the major organic ones. According to SEM observation the sequence of the membrane cleaning should be HCl first, then NaOH.