To investigate the fouling characteristics of modified PES membrane in submerged Membrane Bioreactor (MBR) for domestic wastewater treatment, Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) study was conducted to analyze the microstructure characteristics of PES membrane. Surface roughness and section analysis of both virgin and fouled membrane were achieved by software of NanoScope 6.12. Compared to the virgin membrane, the average roughness (Ra), square average roughness (Rms) and ten points average roughness (Rz) of fouled membrane were increased by 100.6nm, 133.7nm and 330.7nm respectively. The section analysis results indicated that the cake layer formed and membrane pore blocked were the main causes for the increase of TMP. Micro-filtration resistance analysis was conducted to support the results of AFM analysis. It is showed that membrane resistance, cake resistance, pore blocking and irreversible fouling resistance is 0.755, 1.721 and 1.386 respectively, which contributed 20%, 44%, and 36%, respectively, to total resistance of submerged MBR (at MLSS 6000mg/L and flux 21.9L/m2·h). The results proved that AFM could be used to properly describe the fouling characteristics of modified PES membrane in submerged MBR through roughness and section analysis.

Date Published: 12 January 2009
PDF: 6 pages
Proc. SPIE 7133, Fifth International Symposium on Instrumentation Science and Technology, 71334I (12 January 2009); doi: 10.1117/12.810707

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 7133:
Fifth International Symposium on Instrumentation Science and Technology
Jiubin Tan; Xianfang Wen, Editor(s)