Hands-on training on
intensified membrane processes for wastewater treatment

Itzel Marquez, Eduardo
Saez, Kimberly Ogden, Andrea Achilli

ABSTRACT

Since the 1960s membrane
processes have gained an important place in the chemical industry. The key
properties of membranes that allow the selective permeation of a chemical
species through the membrane has been exploited by processes such as liquid and
gas separation and drug delivery. In the mid-1990s, thanks to the development
of reliable and economical microfiltration and ultrafiltration systems, the
water and wastewater treatment areas have become one of the most rapidly
growing areas of membrane technology. Currently, membrane systems are
competitive with conventional water and wastewater treatment producing treated
water of superior quality (1). More recently, as water scarcity is becoming a persistent
issue, water desalination and wastewater reuse have been pursued as alternatives
to depleting water sources. Membrane technology provides efficient and
effective means of treatment for several water quality feeds, using
conventional as well as intensified processes to produce potable water from
impaired sources.

Despite the fact that
membrane processes and intensified processes can contribute to the solution of
water scarcity, there is a lack of training resources and awareness in Process
Intensification (PI) and advanced membrane processes. The American Institute of
Chemical Engineers, through the RAPID initiative addresses this deficiency by
creating PI and MCPI awareness by augmenting educational content introducing PI
and MCPI topics relevant to the industry. As part of these efforts, this
project is developing a hands-on course for graduate students and professionals
to introduce the use of conventional membrane processes (ultrafiltration, UF,
reverse osmosis, RO) and intensified membrane processes (membrane distillation,
MD) to treat wastewater for potable reuse purposes.

The course will take
place in the Water and Energy Sustainable Technology (WEST) Center at the
University of Arizona where participants will have access to laboratories and
controlled pilot/demonstration testing space for water and energy technologies.
WEST houses bench- and pilot-scale membrane systems (UF, RO, MD) and has access
to a wide range of water qualities (reclaimed, potable, and wastewater) onsite.

Figure
1. WEST center pilot scale systems

The participants will
begin the course with an introduction to PI, the fundamentals of membrane
processes and membrane process modeling software. Then, the participants will
start proposing a treatment process train to remove contaminants from a given
wastewater containing mixtures of particles, metals and/or inorganics. They
will design and perform experiments testing their hypotheses in bench-scale and
pilot-scale systems (UF, RO, MD). The experimental data will be used to
calibrate process software developed by Chemstations, as well as software
developed by our research group. Finally, they will perform economic and energy
optimization of the proposed processes to establish practical viability.

By the end of the course,
the participants will be able to:

1.      Understand
the operating principles of membrane processes (UF, NF, RO, and all varieties
of MD) and their application in water treatment problems.

2.      Operate
bench- and pilot-scale treatment processes for water treatment.

3.      Apply
modelling software to perform economic and energy optimization of membrane
processes.

4.      Evaluate
results from bench- and pilot-scale experiments

5.      Design
full-scale membrane treatment processes for the treatment of waters of impaired
quality.

6.      Understand
the principles of Process Intensification in Membrane Distillation by doing
experiments and modelling an MD full scale system.

Reference

1.
Baker, R. W. Membrane Technology and Applications. s.l. :
John Wiley and Sons Ltd, 2012.