Membrane Fouling Control in Municipal Water Treatment: How to Clean Them Back.

This presentation describes a systematic approach to the examination of fouled membrane modules and the development and validation of preferred cleaning procedures, illustrated by case study data. Through experimental design and case studies, we show that cleaning study data must be interpreted carefully to maximize the prospect of restoring modules to the expected output and expected fouling rate. We also show that apparently promising results collected on fiber cleans may be misleading and that validation at module scale improves the prospect for successful translation of an cleaning regime from lab testing to full scale plant operations.