Microfiltration cross-flow configuration

Process Description Microfiltration (MF) separates particles from true solutions, be they liquid or gas phase. Alone among the membrane processes, microfiltration may be accomplished without the use of a membrane. The usual materi s retained by a microfiltra-tion membrane range in size from several [Lm down to 0.2 [Lm. At the low end of this spectrum, very large soluble macromolecules are retained by a microfilter. Bacteria and other microorganisms are a particularly important class of particles retained by MF membranes. Among membrane processes, dead-end filtration is uniquely common to MF, but cross-flow configurations are often used. 

A.2 Cross-Flow, Dead-End Configurations Microfiltration and UF systems are operated in two possible filtration modes. Figure 6.10 shows the cross-flow configuration in which the feed water is pumped tangential to the membrane. Clean water passes the membrane while the water that does not permeate is recirculated as concentrate and combined with additional feed water. To control the concentration of the sohds in the recirculation loop, a portion of the concentrate is discharged at a specific rate. In dead-end or direct filtration, all the feed water passes through the membrane. Therefore, the recovery is 100%, and a small fraction is used periodically for backwash in the system (5-15%). 

Cross-flow is the usual case where cake compressibility is a problem. Cross-flow microfiltration is much the same as cross-flow ultrafiltration in principle. In practice, the devices are often different. As with UF, spiral-wound membranes provide the most economical configuration for many large-scale installations. However, capillary devices and cassettes are widely employed, especially at smaller scale. A detailed description of cross-flow microfiltration had been given by Murkes and Carlsson [Crossflow Filtration, Wiley, New York (1988)]. 

Microfiltration (MF) is a membrane filtration in which the filter medium is a porous membrane with pore sizes in the range of 0.02-10 pm. It can be utilized to separate materials such as clay, bacteria, and colloid particles. The membrane structures have been produced from the cellulose ester, cellulose nitrate materials, and a variety of polymers. A pressure of about 1-5 atm is applied to the inlet side of suspension flow during the operation. The separation is based on a sieve mechanism. The driving force for filtration is the difference between applied pressure and back pressure (including osmotic pressure, if any). Typical configurations of the cross-flow microfiltration process are illustrated in Fig. 2. The cross-flow membrane modules are tubular (multichannel), plate-and-frame, spiral-wound, and hollow-fiber as shown in Fig. 3. The design data for commercial membrane modules are listed in Table 1. 

---