An Efficient Method to Determine Membrane Molecular Weight Cut-Off Using Fluorescent Silica Nanoparticles.

Membrane processes have revolutionized many industries because they are more energy and environmentally friendly than other separation techniques. This initial selection of the membrane for any application is based on its Molecular Weight Cut-Off (MWCO). However, there is a lack of a quantitative, liable, and rapid method to determine the MWCO of the membrane.

Development of a new method for measuring the abrasive potential of water: risk of membrane failure in water treatment plants.

The objectives of this study were to develop an analytical method to distinguish feed water used to produce drinking water, with varying concentrations of suspended solids, in terms of abrasiveness and to define an index that can assess the abrasive potential of the feed water coming in contact with a polymeric membrane. For such process configurations, membrane abrasion has been identified as one of the most recurring and major concerns in operation because the polymeric materials used in treatment plants are relatively sensitive to abrasion. Five different types of apparatus were benchmarked and were evaluated on their ability to be adapted to particles commonly found in most drinking water treatment plants at low concentrations.

Treatment of radioactive liquid effluents by reverse osmosis membranes: From lab-scale to pilot-scale.

The recent use of the reverse osmosis (RO) process at the damaged Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear power plant generated a growing interest in the application of this process for decontamination purposes. This study focused on the development of a robust RO process for decontamination of two kinds of liquid effluents: a contaminated groundwater after a nuclear disaster and a contaminated seawater during a nuclear accident. The SW30 HR membrane was selected among other in this study due to higher retentions (96% for Cs and 98% for Sr) in a true groundwater.

Membrane characterization by microscopic and scattering methods: multiscale structure.

Several microscopic and scattering techniques at different observation scales (from atomic to macroscopic) were used to characterize both surface and bulk properties of four new flat-sheet polyethersulfone (PES) membranes (10, 30, 100 and 300 kDa) and new 100 kDa hollow fibers (PVDF). Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) with "in lens" detection was used to obtain information on the pore sizes of the skin layers at the atomic scale. White Light Interferometry (WLI) and Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) using different scales (for WLI: windows: 900 × 900 µm2 and 360 × 360 µm2; number of points: 1024; for AFM: windows: 50 × 50 µm2 and 5 × 5 µm2; number of points: 512) showed that the membrane roughness increases markedly with the observation scale and that there is a continuity between the different scan sizes for the determination of the RMS roughness.