Evaluation of Poly (Vinylidene Fluoride) Ultrafiltration Membrane Modules For Pretreatment of Reverse Osmosis Plants

Water treatment and reuse in oil and gas industry are essential issues. water shortage problems have become more severe and the need for compact and mobile water treatment installations is felt more in recent decades. in this regards, membrane processes have been properly and widely applied in various sectors of water and wastewater treatment. ultrafiltration (uf) as a major section, plays a very important role in this field. polyvinylidene fluoride (pvdf) uf membranes are considered as the best options for pretreatment of reverse osmosis (ro) plants which serve as the main supply of boiler feed water in oil refineries or petrochemical companies. in this study, different types of spiral wound pvdf uf membrane modules of 100-200 kda (mwco) which were all fabricated at research institute of petroleum industry (ripi), iran, were characterized and evaluated for their permeation and rejection performance. sem analysis, pure water flux, solute rejection, flux recovery ratio and tss removal efficiency tests were performed for modules. the results were compared with two commercial pvdf uf membrane modules, too.it was shown that the water permeation flux and mwco of the fabricated modules are in acceptable permeation range of industrial modules and have the potential of being used as pretreatment of ro plants.