Development of Reliable, Cost-Effective Membrane Technology for Industrial Wastewater Treatment

Many industrial wastewater producers are being required to treat their wastewater prior to discharge to publicly owned treatment works. These streams often are relatively small (< 50,000 gal/day), but they contain several categories of pollutants that make them difficult to treat with any one technology. Reverse osmosis can produce dischargeable water from these streams at a very economical cost, provided the process reliability can be improved. The key problem is membrane fouling leading to a rapid decline in membrane flux. Membrane Technology and Research, Inc.'s project involves the development of a new type of nonfouling reverse osmosis membrane in a process design that could solve the fouling problem. In Phase I, the membranes will be tested with model fouling solutions, along with commercial membranes as controls to demonstrate the overall feasibility of the approach. In a subsequent Phase II project, a small pilot system will be built and operated.