Modeling aspects of membrane-based industrial wastewater treatment

Abstract

Membrane-based separation processes have been widely used for the treatment of industrial effluent streams, considering their wide range of applicability and easy scale-up. The effluent streams usually consist of a mixture of interacting as well as noninteracting components. The physical and transport properties of these constituents, viz., the diffusivity properties of the cake layer deposited over the membrane surface, etc., are very important for modeling and cannot be determined experimentally. Lab scale filtration data can be utilized to determine these parameters for specific contaminants. The modeling of membrane performance has been carried out extensively focusing mainly on predicting the permeate flux. However, prediction of the quality of the filtrate is also very important considering the stringent requirement of the quality of the treated effluent. This chapter mainly focuses on various aspects of modeling of membrane-based separation process used for the industrial applications. This will be useful in predicting the efficiency and throughput of the filtration system and hence aiding in the scaling up.