Modeling of Membrane Fouling and Flux Decline in Microfiltration of Oily Wastewater Using Ceramic Membranes

One of the major problems in pressure-driven membrane processes is reduction of flux far below the theoretical capacity of the membrane. The results of an experimental study of fouling mechanisms of ceramic membranes in separation of oil from synthesized oily wastewaters are presented. Mullite microfiltration (MF) membranes were synthesized from kaolin clay as MF ceramic membranes. The rejection of total organic carbon (TOC) for the synthetic feeds was found to be more than 94% by these membranes. Hermia's models were used to investigate the fouling mechanisms of membranes. The effect of pressure, cross flow velocity (CFV), temperature, oil concentration, and salt concentration on flux decline were investigated. The results showed that the cake filtration model can well predict the flux decline of mullite ceramic membranes; average error of this model is less than 7%. The results show that by increasing pressure from 0.5 to 4 bar, porosity of the cake layer on the mullite membranes decreases from 25.68% to 14.98%. After the cake filtration model, the intermediate pore blocking model was found to well predict the experimental data with an average error less than 10.5%.