Reverse osmosis membrane chlorine tolerance

Cellulose acetate was the first high-performance reverse osmosis membrane material discovered. The flux and rejection of cellulose acetate membranes have now been surpassed by interfacial composite membranes. However, cellulose acetate membranes still maintain a small fraction of the market because they are easy to make, mechanically tough, and resistant to degradation by chlorine and other oxidants, a problem with interfacial composite membranes. Cellulose acetate membranes can tolerate up to 1 ppm chlorine, so chlorination can be used to sterilize the feed water, a major advantage with feed streams having significant bacterial loading. 

Plants are cleaned, sanitized, and rinsed immediately after processing, and right before processing to ensure satisfactory initial process conditions from microbiological standpoint [3]. Because chlorine is freely permeable to most membranes that it is able to sanitize the permeate side of the system as well as the retentate side, using solutions of sodium hypochlorite containing 100-200 ppm of active chlorine is a common sanitation technique for many membranes, except cellulose acetate reverse osmosis membranes, which can only tolerate brief exposure to chlorine at 10-50 ppm level [3]. 

Park SY, Kim SG, Chun JH, Chun BH, Kim SH (2012) Fabrication and characterization of the chlorine-tolerant disulfonated poly(arylene ether sulfpolyamide-grafted silica composite reverse osmosis membrane. Desalin Wato Treat 43 221-229... 

High performance thin-film composite membranes for reverse osmosis applications were fabricated by coating solutions of a highly chlorine-tolerant disulfonated PAES [92,93]. As base monomers, 4,4 -dichlorodiphenyl sulfone and 4,4 -biphenol are used. 4,4 -dichlorodiphenyl sulfone is then directly sulfonated to get a disulfonated monomer, 3,3 -disutfonate-4,4 -dichlorodiphenyl sulfone. These monomers can be directly copolymerized on a commercially available porous polysulfone support. 

Post-treatment of the desalted permeate from the reverse osmosis unit (Section 7.2.1.2) consists of the addition of CI2 and Ume for disinfection and corrosion protection. If H2S is present, it is eliminated by air stripping. For brackish-water feeds containing hydrocarbons, an activated carbon adsorber is used to remove dissolved hydrocarbons prior to microfiltration, which is followed by steps needed during the pretreatment and post-treatment processes dechlorination is required as a pretreatment if the RO membrane for desalination cannot tolerate residual chlorine dissolved otcygen is often removed to avoid damaging the RO membrane via vacuum based deaeration or addition of sodium bisuMte. An introduction to the pretreatment and post-treatment processes for membrane based sea-water and brackish-water desalination has been provided by Williams et al. (2001). The scale of such desalination plants is quite large, as much as 87 million gallons per day at Ashkelon, Israel, for example. 

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