Speaker
Description
Microfiltration is a water purification method used by municipal facilities to produce potable water that relies primarily on a size-exclusion mechanism. When a contaminated solvent passes through a membrane filter, unwanted contaminants with diameter larger than that of the membranes pores, such as suspended solids, large bacteria, and proteins, are retained on the membrane. This foulant build-up occludes the area open for fluid flow, impairing the efficiency of filtration operations by decreasing the flux through the membrane over time. Backwashing is a strategy to restore filtration wherein clean water is processed backward through the membrane to dislodge attached foulants. The overarching goal of this work is to determine the optimal backwashing parameters (duration, frequency, and flux) to ensure sufficient membrane recovery without sacrificing more clean water than is needed.
We developed a 2D Monte Carlo model to simulate forward filtration and backwashing through constant pressure, dead-end, at-sheet membranes, and benchmarked it against lab-scale experiments [1]. Then, we extended our model to approximate the more complicated hollow-fiber membrane geometry and were able to qualitatively capture constant-flux filtration operations in such systems. Our next step aims to incorporate long-term fouling mechanisms into our model to capture foulant build-up during cake filtration which can lead to biofilm formation. This research is funded by NSF CBET-2211001.
[1] Abigail R. Drumm and Francesca Bernardi. Monte Carlo simulations of two-dimensional at-sheet membrane lters for constant-pressure water puri cation. Physical Review E, 112(5):055501, 2025.
