Produced water has been a big issue of water and environmental pollution. In this research, results of an experimental and modeling study on the separation of oil and salts from produced water using a rectangular flat sheet polyacrylonitrile (PAN) ultrafiltration (UF) membrane (nominal pore size of 10 nm) were analyzed. The effects of transmembrane pressure (TMP) (1, 2, 3 and 5 bar) on permeation flux of UF membranes for treatment of produced water were investigated. The results show that the average removal of chemical oxygen demand (COD) and total organic carbon (TOC) during the experiments were 94 and 83%, respectively. The UF membrane showed high potential for application in industry for produced water reusing purposes. The experimental results showed that oil retentions of almost all the membranes were over 99% and oil concentrations in the permeate were below 0.2 mg L–1. In addition, the fouling mechanism involved in UF processing of produced water was investigated by modeling. Experimental results of permeation flux were compared to the results of the fouling models. After the cake filtration model, the intermediate pore blocking model was found to predict the experimental data very well.
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Research Article|
March 19 2013
Ultrafiltration membrane process for produced water treatment: experimental and modeling
Ramin Badrnezhad
;
1
Faculty of Chemical Engineering, Amirkabir University of Technology, Hafez Ave., Tehran, Iran
E-mail: badrnezhad@yahoo.com
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Ali Heydari Beni
Ali Heydari Beni
2
Process Systems Engineering, Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science, University of Regina, Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada S4S 0A2
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Journal of Water Reuse and Desalination (2013) 3 (3): 249-259.
Article history
Received:
November 17 2012
Accepted:
February 03 2013
Citation
Ramin Badrnezhad, Ali Heydari Beni; Ultrafiltration membrane process for produced water treatment: experimental and modeling. Journal of Water Reuse and Desalination 1 September 2013; 3 (3): 249–259. doi: https://doi.org/10.2166/wrd.2013.092
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Ramin Badrnezhad, Ali Heydari Beni; Ultrafiltration membrane process for produced water treatment: experimental and modeling. Journal of Water Reuse and Desalination 1 September 2013; 3 (3): 249–259. doi: https://doi.org/10.2166/wrd.2013.092
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