TY - JOUR
T1 - Observation and mitigation of perimeter artefacts in bench scale membrane characterization
AU - Blankert, Bastiaan
AU - Martinez, Fernan
AU - Vrouwenvelder, Johannes S.
AU - Picioreanu, Cristian
N1 - KAUST Repository Item: Exported on 2023-09-29
Acknowledged KAUST grant number(s): OSR-CRG2020-4372
Acknowledgements: This publication is based upon work supported by the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) Office of Sponsored Research (OSR) under Award No. OSR-CRG2020-4372.
PY - 2023/9/22
Y1 - 2023/9/22
N2 - Perimeter artefacts, such as test cell induced membrane damage and unrepresentative hydrodynamics, can significantly affect bench scale performance evaluation using membrane coupons. By comparing separately collected center and perimeter permeate, the effect of perimeter artefacts can be identified. The additional salt passage in the perimeter area (i.e., along the edges of the membrane coupon) depends non-linearly on pressure, and is implicitly affected by flux, temperature and salinity (osmotic pressure), leading to a potential increase of the measured salt passage by a factor two. We observed a very slow dynamic response (τ ≈ 12 h) to changes in operational conditions, suggesting that in our case the perimeter artefact was diffusive in nature. Due to this slow response, the perimeter salt passage trails previously evaluated operational conditions, possibly resulting in a false trend, hysteresis or high variance, depending on the sequential ordering and duration of test condition intervals. The effect of perimeter artefacts can be largely mitigated by measuring salt rejection from only the central area of the coupon.
AB - Perimeter artefacts, such as test cell induced membrane damage and unrepresentative hydrodynamics, can significantly affect bench scale performance evaluation using membrane coupons. By comparing separately collected center and perimeter permeate, the effect of perimeter artefacts can be identified. The additional salt passage in the perimeter area (i.e., along the edges of the membrane coupon) depends non-linearly on pressure, and is implicitly affected by flux, temperature and salinity (osmotic pressure), leading to a potential increase of the measured salt passage by a factor two. We observed a very slow dynamic response (τ ≈ 12 h) to changes in operational conditions, suggesting that in our case the perimeter artefact was diffusive in nature. Due to this slow response, the perimeter salt passage trails previously evaluated operational conditions, possibly resulting in a false trend, hysteresis or high variance, depending on the sequential ordering and duration of test condition intervals. The effect of perimeter artefacts can be largely mitigated by measuring salt rejection from only the central area of the coupon.
UR - http://hdl.handle.net/10754/692726
UR - https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0011916423006343
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85171748650&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.desal.2023.117002
DO - 10.1016/j.desal.2023.117002
M3 - Article
SN - 0011-9164
VL - 567
SP - 117002
JO - Desalination
JF - Desalination
ER -