Membrane filtration plays a critical role in advanced water and wastewater treatment practices. However, membrane fouling increases the operation and maintenance costs, and ultimately shortens membrane life. This study explored a self-cleaning PVDF piezoelectric film with porous structures served as a water filtration membrane, which could vibrate at a controlled frequency, waveform and amplitude to control membrane fouling. Experiments were conducted with filtration of 0.5 g/L kaolin suspended particles. Because of partial rejection of the kaolin particles by the membrane, the fouling mechanisms include both cake layer formation and membrane pore blocking. The resonant frequency of the membrane was around 147 Hz (see the figure) measured by pseudo random scanning at 5.4 V. The results indicated that the vibrating piezoelectric membrane reduced fouling compared to control tests. Membrane fouling was significantly reduced when the vibrating frequency was close to the resonant frequency of the membrane and the cross-membrane filtration pressure was nulled for cleaning cycle.

Self-cleaning piezoelectric PVDF membrane for filtration of suspended particles

254th National Meeting (2017)

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