Effects of sodium hypochlorite exposure mode on PES/PVP ultrafiltration membrane degradation

Drinking water production plants using membrane filtration processes report membrane failure issues. According to the literature, membrane degradation is often induced by exposure to sodium hypochlorite, an oxidant widely used during in-place cleanings. The present study focused on quantifying the effect of membrane exposure mode to hypochlorite on properties modifications of a PES/PVP ultrafiltration membrane widely used for drinking water production. For this purpose effects of sodium hypochlorite concentration, contact duration and exposure mode (static or dynamic) were investigated. The pH of the hypochlorite solution was set to 8 as it was demonstrated in numerous previous works that the pH range 7-8 leads to the most severe modification in the membrane characteristics. Membrane degradation was monitored at molecular scale by attenuated total reflectance infrared spectroscopy and at macroscopic scale by pure water permeability and elongation at break measurements. The results obtained in static (soaking) and dynamic (filtration and filtration/backwashing cycles) hypochlorite exposure modes indicated that PES/PVP membrane degradation progress was predominantly governed by hypochlorite oxidation rate. In the tested conditions, mechanical stress (pressure differentials) did not significantly contribute to membrane ageing. The correlation between molecular and macroscopic characterizations demonstrated that PVP degradation is responsible for the membrane integrity loss. A linear relationship between the loss of ductility of the membrane and the progress of the PVP degradation was obtained whatever the exposure mode. Thanks to experiments conducted at various hypochlorite concentrations and exposure durations, the hypochlorite dose parameter (hypochlorite concentration times contact time), widely used in the literature, was demonstrated to be inappropriate to describe the degradation rate: the hypochlorite concentration impact was shown to be dominating the exposure time's one on the degradation rate.