Hydrodynamic factors affecting flux and fouling during reverse osmosis of seawater Original Research Article

In this paper results are presented obtained from investigations on a polyamide reverse osmosis membrane fouled by precipitation of materials which exist in seawater. In these studies the effect of different hydrodynamic factors on fouling of the membrane was investigated. Operating conditions such as temperature, pressure, crossflow velocity and pH, which could play an important role in the fouling processes, were selected for the studies. The results show that increasing temperature, pressure and crossflow velocity enhance fouling of the membrane, but on the other hand, increase permeate flux. Thus, optimization of the parameters was found to be necessary and optimum values of them and pH were determined.