Evaluation of surface properties of reverse osmosis membranes on the initial biofouling stages under no filtration condition

In order to evaluate the effect of membrane surface properties on the initial stage of biofouling, in the reverse osmosis (RO) membrane process, initial bacterial adhesion and biofilm formation experiments were performed under no filtration condition. In this study, five commercialized polyamide thin-film composite RO membranes (SW30HRLE, SW30HR (Dow FilmTec Co., USA), TM820 (Toray Co., Japan), RE-BE, RE-FE (Woongjin Chemical Co., Korea)) were chosen and their surface properties such as surface charge, roughness, hydrophobicity and surface morphology were measured. For examining initial bacterial adhesion, a flow channel reactor was employed for 3 h, while for examining a biofilm formation, the CDC reactor was employed for 48 h. Pseudomonas aeruginosa PAO1 tagged with GFP was selected as a model bacterial strain. Major findings in this study indicate that although the initial bacterial cell adhesion in a flow channel reactor indicated more bacterial cells attachment on the membrane surface with higher hydrophobicity, the extent of biofilm grown in CDC reactor for 48 h became similar regardless of the difference of the membrane surface properties, indicating that the membrane surface properties become a less important factor affecting the biofilm growth on the membrane surface. This finding will be helpful in improving the understanding of biofouling issue occurring in the real RO membrane system, although practical implication is somewhat limited since this study was performed under no filtration condition.