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IDA 2005 (Singapore) Paper: Optimizing Membrane Plants via Correlating Fouling with Critical Flux

This innovative technology is a proven and effective solution to the most critical problem facing membrane technology applications: membrane fouling. Your ability to monitor and measure your plant's actual performance, not long-term trending, with this universal and versatile system, will certainly have a significant positive impact on your plant's oerational efficiency, true performance, membrane suseful life and operational costs.

MASAR^® measures a unique early-warning system as a real-time fouling indicator, known as the that makes the system uniquely capable of detecting the beginning of membrane fouling development in RO/NF/UF/MF plants as soon as it starts to occur.

This indicator is called the Fouling Monitor (FM).

This graph, based on actual design and operating data from a major brackish RO plant, shows how:

MASAR^® analyzed actual operating data from this large brackish RO plant over more than 27,000 hours of operation (3 years). Normalized data using ASTM D-4516 standard method (shown in red), as well as the proprietary modified MASAR^® method (shown in blue) are displayed. The Fouling Monitor (FM), which is the difference between the two sets of normalized flows, was calculated and displayed.

The ASTM-normalized flux decline curve showed that the plant performed very well and much better than its projected design in the first two years of operation. However, significant membrane fouling suddenly started to be exhibited at the plant at about 17,000 hours of operation (end of second year). This has resulted in a rapid loss of productivity. Extensive and more frequent membrane cleanings were performed in order to restore performance, but success was only temporarily and lasted less and less each time. Eventually, the plant was not even producing the guaranteed flow and salt passage. With irreversible damage, major membrane replacements, at significant cost, became mandatory in order to recover lost performance. The source of biofouling that was discovered then was subsequently identified and corrected, but only after the plant suffered major losses in availability and productivity, as well as unscheduled membrane cleanings and replacements.

MASAR^® would have discovered the biofouling as early as the end of the first year of operation, at about 9,000 hours, when the FM started to rise from 0.8% at the end of the first year to 8.2% and 15.7% by the end of the second, at about 17,000 hours. By the time the ASTM normalized flux decline exhibited the fouling problem at a very late stage, the FM reached 20% at about 27,000 hours of operation. By monitoring the FM, plant personnel would have realized what was happening in their system a many months before the sudden performance deterioration was actually witnessed in the plant. They would have then trouble-shooted the problem, discovered the fouling source and corrected it.

This would have translated into significant reductions in plant down time, maintenance and operating costs while assuring that plant always produced or exceeded the design quantity and quality of water with maximum operational efficiency and availability.

DuPont's Evaluation and Recommendation Letter