Membrane bioreactor (MBR) technology is a new method for water and wastewater treatment due to its ability to produce better and high-quality effluent that meets water quality regulations. MBR also is an advanced way to displace the conventional activated sludge (CAS) process. Even this membrane gives better performances compared to CAS, it does have few drawbacks such as high maintenance cost ...

The shrinking water supply together with our continuously increasing demand for this resource has stimulated a renewed interest in reverse osmosis (RO) as a water treatment unit process. A wider use of RO membranes, however, is impeded by a group of phenomena that lead to permeate flux decline, deterioration of permeate water quality, shortening of membrane life, and thus to a substantial incre...

When faced with protecting a three-point lead in the waning seconds of a basketball game, which is a preferable strategy: playing defense or fouling the offense before they can attempt a game-tying shot? Gonzaga University head coach, Mark Few, was faced with such a decision against Michigan State in the semi-finals of the Maui Invitational (November 22, 2005) and elected to play defense. The s...

This study investigated the effects of high salinity on the performance and membrane fouling of membrane bioreactor (MBR) with saline wastewater. Synthetic wastewaters containing 5-20 g/L salts (NaCl) were treated in identical lab-scale (7 L) MBRs monitoring removals of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) and ammonia. Increase in salt concentrations did not significantly change the removal efficienc...

Fouling and slagging are some difficulties for the development of biomass as energy potential and to achieve the targets of renewable energy sources utilization. The proper technique to analyze the influence of fouling in a biomass boiler is to monitorize the evolution of heat absorption in heat transfer equipment. Traditional equation-based monitoring techniques have problems to tackle with th...

The research on electro-conductive membranes has expanded in recent years. These membranes have strong prospective as key components in next generation water treatment plants because they are engineered in order to enhance their performance in terms of separation, flux, fouling potential, and permselectivity. The present review summarizes recent developments in the preparation of electro-conduc...

Described is a lithographic technique used to realize high resolution tracks of the motor protein kinesin inside flow cells. The process consists of patterns of plasma polymerized PEG-like non-fouling coating on a fouling glass substrate. When in contact with a coated surface, proteins adhere exclusively to the fouling areas, thus forming kinesin tracks suited for microtubule guidance. Parallel...

The spiral-wound element is an industry standard because of its high membrane area packing density, low cost of manufacture, and extensive installation base worldwide. Plastic mesh spacers create a feed-channel between facing membrane leafs and promote turbulent flow, which aids to reduce solute concentration polarization and related scaling and fouling phenomena. Computational and experimental...

Cross-flow microfiltration (CFMF) was experimentaLLy studied for the separation of precipitates of chromium hydroxide. Although this process enables one to obtain chromium-free filtrate, a disadvantage is that the filtration flux declines rapidly due to membrane fouling. In order to avoid this fouling problem and increase the filtration flux, an electric field was applied across the membrane as...

In axial flow compressor, blade surface roughness is affected by many failure modes such as fouling, erosion, corrosion and foreign object damage. But with development of filter performance, particles with diameter larger than 2 μm cannot enter into compressor, so fouling is the most important influence factor which results in the variation of surface roughness. This study respectively discusse...