Comparative Between Vertical and Horizontal Panel Orientation for Optimum Membrane Surface Patterning Effect

It is well-known that aeration is an efficient method to reduce fouling formation for the membrane-based system. In recent years, membrane surface patterning was claimed able to increase the efficiency of aeration by enhancing the scouring action of air bubbles. Many studies reported that the combination of aeration and membrane surface patterning showed excellent performance of the membrane-based system for various applications. Nevertheless, here another method known as membrane panel orientation was evaluated to observe the membrane-based microalgae harvesting performance for the application of Chlorella vulgaris filtration. To date, none of reported literature discussed about membrane panel orientation as fouling control for crossflow filtration membrane system. The aim of this study is to determine the most optimum panel orientation that would maximize the surface patterning effect, as well as an improvement for a combined method of aeration and membrane surface patterning as membrane fouling control technique. Two types of membranes were fabricated in this study which were flat membrane (FM) and corrugated membrane (CM). FM has a flat and smooth surface (without surface patterning method) while CM has hills and valleys topography (with surface patterning method). First, the effect of panel orientation was measured to find out the most optimum tilting angle that has higher membrane permeability. The tilting angle measured were 0� (vertical), 15�, 30�, 45�, 60�, 75� and 90� (horizontal) in an aerated membrane system under constant TMP (10 kPa). Results showed that permeability increased as the tilting angle increased from 0� to 90�, with the permeability of CM higher than FM under all applied tilted angles. Even though the highest permeability was reported for both membranes are at the horizontal panel but, the highest permeability increment was reported at the vertical panel. Hence, panel orientation effects at 0� and 90� were further evaluated under various operating transmembrane pressures of TMP (2.5, 5, 7.5, 10, 12.5, 15, 17.5 and 19 kPa) for both FM and CM. To conclude, the vertical membrane showed a higher permeability increment due to surface patterning compared to the horizontal membrane at operating TMPs values (from 2.5 till 12.5 kPa). © 2022 American Institute of Physics Inc.. All rights reserved.