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Flow and fouling in a pleated membrane filter

Flow and fouling in a pleated membrane filter
Flow and fouling in a pleated membrane filter
Pleated membrane filters are widely used in many applications, and offer significantly better surface area to volume ratios than equal area unpleated membrane filters. However, their filtration characteristics are markedly inferior to those of equivalent unpleated membrane filters in dead-end filtration. While several hypotheses have been advanced for this poor performance, one possibility is that the flow field induced by the pleating leads to spatially nonuniform fouling of the filter, which in turn affects performance. In this paper we investigate this hypothesis by developing a simplified model for the flow and fouling within a pleated membrane filter. Our model accounts for the pleated membrane geometry (which affects the flow), for porous support layers surrounding the membrane, and for two membrane fouling mechanisms: (i) adsorption of very small particles within membrane pores; and (ii) blocking of entire pores by large particles. We use asymptotic techniques based on the small pleat aspect ratio to solve the model, and we compare solutions to those for the closest-equivalent unpleated filter.
0022-1120
36-59
Sanaei, Pejman
ef7c0e20-45f0-450c-b32c-e32254c5ff1b
Richardson, Giles
3fd8e08f-e615-42bb-a1ff-3346c5847b91
Tom, Witelski
95258791-a46b-4d70-8972-80ae237b4f75
Cummings, Linda
26b65cc3-755c-4105-b37f-56ad249ab40b
Sanaei, Pejman
ef7c0e20-45f0-450c-b32c-e32254c5ff1b
Richardson, Giles
3fd8e08f-e615-42bb-a1ff-3346c5847b91
Tom, Witelski
95258791-a46b-4d70-8972-80ae237b4f75
Cummings, Linda
26b65cc3-755c-4105-b37f-56ad249ab40b

Sanaei, Pejman, Richardson, Giles, Tom, Witelski and Cummings, Linda (2016) Flow and fouling in a pleated membrane filter. Journal of Fluid Mechanics, 795, 36-59. (doi:10.1017/jfm.2016.194).

Record type: Article

Abstract

Pleated membrane filters are widely used in many applications, and offer significantly better surface area to volume ratios than equal area unpleated membrane filters. However, their filtration characteristics are markedly inferior to those of equivalent unpleated membrane filters in dead-end filtration. While several hypotheses have been advanced for this poor performance, one possibility is that the flow field induced by the pleating leads to spatially nonuniform fouling of the filter, which in turn affects performance. In this paper we investigate this hypothesis by developing a simplified model for the flow and fouling within a pleated membrane filter. Our model accounts for the pleated membrane geometry (which affects the flow), for porous support layers surrounding the membrane, and for two membrane fouling mechanisms: (i) adsorption of very small particles within membrane pores; and (ii) blocking of entire pores by large particles. We use asymptotic techniques based on the small pleat aspect ratio to solve the model, and we compare solutions to those for the closest-equivalent unpleated filter.

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More information

Accepted/In Press date: 9 March 2016
e-pub ahead of print date: 13 April 2016
Published date: May 2016
Organisations: Applied Mathematics

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 406246
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/406246
ISSN: 0022-1120
PURE UUID: 5817bed0-2e1a-43c1-89df-02de655cbed7
ORCID for Giles Richardson: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0001-6225-8590

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Date deposited: 10 Mar 2017 10:43
Last modified: 16 Mar 2024 04:00

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Contributors

Author: Pejman Sanaei
Author: Witelski Tom
Author: Linda Cummings

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