Investigations of hydrodynamic permeability of ceramic and polysulfone membranes for microfiltration and ultrafiltration

The aim of this research was to compare the hydraulic resistance of several commercial ultrafiltration and microfiltration membranes. The hydraulic resistance for each membrane was calculated from the pure water permeation data collected at various transmembrane pressures and temperatures to check the effects of these parameters on the membrane resistance. The experiments have been carried out in a laboratory crossflow UF/MF equipment for clarification of fruit juices. This paper introduces the experimental results showing the influence of operating parameters, such as feed flow rate, temperature, pressure difference in the microfiltration and ultrafiltration through the ceramic Kerasep membrane (pore size 0.2 μm, Tech-Sep, Miribel, France), Carbosep M9 and M7 membrane (molecular weight cut-off of 300 and 30 kg/mol, Tech-Sep, Miribel, France) and polysulfone membranes (molecular weight cut-off of 30 kg/mol, Frenesius, Germany). The results confirmed our earlier work [1] but we provide here many additional results. The hydraulic resistance Rm was 0.65, 3.56, and 0.05 × 1013 1/m for Carbosep M7, Carbosep M9 and Kerasep membrane, respectively. The hydraulic resistance of these membranes does not depend on the operating pressure, which means that the membranes are incompressible. The hydraulic resistance of a polysulfone hollow fiber membrane slightly increased with increasing the applied pressure difference. The Rm values were in the range of (0.61 – 0.92) ⋅1013 1/m, and the applied pressure difference was in the range of (0.225 – 0.900) bar, which is an indication that this membrane was compressible.