Scale-down process accumulation

The development of chemical industry has provided us with the means to produce, on an ecologically significant scale, chemicals that interfere with the natural cycles of synthesis and breakdown either because they accelerate or slow down large-scale natural processes (e.g., the fluoro chloro hydrocarbons which accelerate the breakdown of ozone by sunlight) or, more commonly, because they resist breakdown themselves (e.g., certain synthetic polymers). This has become a matter of grave and widespread concern and has resulted in regulations and voluntary measures to restrict or prohibit the manufacture and use of materials that interfere with the natural cycles. This concern is particularly acute in those cases where this interference has direct or indirect adverse effects upon human health (as in the case of the fluoro chloro hydrocarbons), but it exists also where massive accumulation occurs without known health hazards (as in the case of the too-stable synthetic polymers). 

The pressure-driven membrane processes can be operated at fixed pressure (FP) or fixed flux (FF), and FP tends to be lab and small scale and FF is large-scale commercial. Fouling for FP shows as a flux decline and for FF as TMP rise (Figure 6.1(b)). The fouling kinetics differ since FP becomes self-limiting as flux-driven fouling slows down, whereas for FF it is self-accelerating as foulants steadily accumulate and concentration polarization accelerates. These differences mean that extrapolation of FP trends to FF requires caution. 

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