Flux enhancement with glass ball inserted membrane module for the ultrafiltration of dextran solution

Abstract

The glass-ball-inserted membrane module has been designed to enhance the filtration of a flat-sheet membrane. Three different modes of filtration experiments were conducted and compared to demonstrate the flux enhancement due to the presence of glass balls: normal dead-end filtration, vortex flow filtration, and enhanced vortex flow filtration using glass balls. In the case of enhanced vortex flow filtration, the permeate flux was found to be three times as large as that of dead-end filtration and two times larger than vortex flow filtration. In addition, the flux decline was observed to be relatively low. The effect of the amount of glass balls on the permeate flux was also investigated by changing the glass ball volume fraction from 0.059 to 0.356. It has been observed that the permeate flux shows a maximum value of the volume fraction of 0.119. For the glass-ball-inserted membrane module, the permeate flux tends to increase with the feed flow rate.