Membrane separation technology is widely used in many fields owing to its highly efficient, energy-saving and eco-friendly features. However, the sustainable and efficient application of membranes has been retarded mainly because of the membrane fouling. A simple and effective way to alleviate concentration polarization and membrane fouling is modifying the membrane geometry to generate fluid instabilities and/or vortices. Dean vortex, a pair of counter-rotating vortices produced by centrifugal force, can effectively enhance turbulence as well as mass transfer on membrane surface. It has been reported that Dean vortex could alleviate concentration polarization and membrane fouling. In this paper, a novel 3D composite membrane with helix structure has been designed to generate Dean vortex inside the flow channel, and the membrane was fabricated by spin-coating the casting solution of polyethersulfone on the inner surface of the channel printed by 3D printer. The optimized dimensions such as height of the channel, radius and pitch of helix are 19 mm, 30 mm and 41.5 mm. The effects of the filtration time, flow rate of feed solution as well as the concentration and size of particles in solution on the flux of membrane are investigated. The anti-fouling performance of membrane is characterized by a parameter R, which is defined as the mass ratio of filtrate through 3D composite membrane and composite cylindrical membrane. The fluxes of pure water through two kinds of membranes are almost the same under operation pressure of 50 kPa and 100 kPa. However, the flux of aqueous solution with graphite particles through 3D composite membrane is much higher than that through the cylindrical membrane due to the formation of Dean vortex. Compared with that of the cylindrical membrane, the flux through 3D composite membrane decreases slower with the time. The R value increases as the increasing the flow rate of feed solution. The R value increases as the increasing the concentration of particles in the feed solution from 1 g/L to 20 g/L. In conclusion, the 3D composite membrane alleviates the concentration polarization and membrane fouling via Dean vortex and has great potentials for process intensification of membrane separation

Construction of a novel composite membrane with 3D structure for process intensification of membrane separation

253rd National Meeting (2017)

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