Optimization of Air Backwash Frequency during the Ultrafiltration of Seawater.

The main objective of this paper is to study the effect of new air backwash on dead-end ultrafiltration of seawater with a pilot at semi-industrial scale (20 m/day). To control membrane fouling, two different backwashes were used to clean the membrane: classical backwash (CB) and new air backwash (AB) that consists of injecting air into the membrane module before a classical backwash. To evaluate the efficiency of AB and CB, a resistance in series model was used to calculate each resistance: membrane (R), reversible (R) and irreversible (R).