QUANTITATIVE DESCRIPTION OF ULTRAFILTRATION IN A ROTATING FILTRATION DEVICE

A correlation was developed to quantitatively describe the flux in a high-speed rotating filtration device using a minimum set of parameters. The experimental results were found to be consistent with the concentration polarization (CP) model. Beyond a threshold pressure flux ceases to depend on membrane permeability. The CP model was modified to include the concentration dependence of the diffusivity. This approach was found to be consistent with the strong dependence of flux on pH. Protein concentration in the polarized layer adjacent to the membrane surface was estimated using a procedure that corrects for some of the inconsistencies in the methods usually applied. Four dimensionless numbers were necessary to correlate the experiments with good accuracy. Previously-reported correlations used only three dimensionless numbers. Usage of four numbers could be justified by dimensional analysis. Finally, the performance of rotary or vortex filtration was compared to that of other configurations.