Influence of two phase flow on cake layer resistance and flux enhancement in spiral wound and submerged flat sheet microfiltration membrane modules

Gas sparging has emerged as an effective technique for control of particle fouling in different microfiltration membrane processes. However most of the research work carried out has been pertinent to hollow fiber and tubular membrane geometries. A little attention has been paid to evaluate the potentails of gas-liquid two-phase for control of particle fouling in spiral wound and submerged flat sheet microfiltration membranes. This study focuses on control of particle fopuling by gas sparging in open channel spiral wound and submerged flat sheet microfiltration membranes. Commercial yeast was used as test suspension. The Effect of gas sparging on membrane fouling and permeate flux was studied by analysing the cake layer characteristics like cake mass deposition, cake layer thickness and cake porosity. The filtration flux and cake properties under various operating conditions, such as cross-flow velocity, filtration pressure, particle concentration, and sparging intensity are analyzed based on hydrodynamics. The results of this study show that gas sparging is very effective in control of particle fouling for both membrane module geometries. It was found that gas bubbling reduced the deposition of particles on the membrane surface due to which cake layer thickness decreases and resultantly permeate flux increased substantially. The permeate flux increased with increase in gas sparging intensity. A maximum flux enhancement of 170 % and 284 % were observed for spiral wound and flat sheet membranes respectively when gas sparging was applied to the process.