WRRF report pulls together membrane-fouling knowledge

A report bringing together the current state of the art of dealing with membrane fouling has been published by the WateReuse Research Foundation as a preparation for refining and/or developing visualized future membrane-fouling research activities.

State-of-the-Science Review of Membrane Fouling: Organic, Inorganic, and Biological (06-010A-1) summarizes the current state of fouling understanding and control. The project focuses on the most common areas of biological, organic and inorganic causes, and offers new ideas that can lead to technologies that ultimately may be used in full-scale installations.

The project was organized into three tasks. The first involved conducting a literature review on membrane fouling and surveying industry users and researchers about their current research activities. This work led to the development (“visualization”) of initial categories for research projects.

The second task was to convene a workshop consisting of project participants and selected experts in the membrane fouling field to review the identified information from Task One and to refine and/or develop the visualized future membrane fouling research activities. The third task was to evaluate the gathered data and prepare this final report.

This report describes the 27 research project topics that were developed. For each topic the report describes the topic, objective, probable tasks that could be followed, the rationale for doing the project, and what overall benefit would be gained by completing the research.

The information is substantively complete and immediately available for use by research agencies to finalize the project scope and release for funding proposals.