What is Water Flux? 3

[Burtis]

Doing a research project on MF and UF Membrane Filtration for my Instrumentation Engineering Technologist course that I am enrolled in and was wondering if anyone could tell me what water flux is.

 

[bimr]

Water flux is simply the flow through the membrane expressed as flow/area. Flux is often expressed as gallons permeated per day per square foot of membrane area (GFD)

 

[sbush]

The flow rate through certain ultrafiltration and microfiltration systems will vary and deteriorate over time, based upon the amount and type of solids in the feed water and water temperature. A system operating on one water supply will not produce exactly the same flow rate when operating on a different water supply.

S. Bush

http://www.water-eg.com

 

[quark]

MF and UF membranes are used for filtration (generally, permeate is the product) as well as concentration techniques (generally, retentate is the product). As the products vary, it is difficult to characterize the membranes by the manufacturers. As an approximation, they test the membranes with water, with predetermined quality, and and the permeate flux rate is published.

Once you take a trial on your actual product on pilot scale, you can extrapolate and approximate the data for various concentrations and feed flowrates and accordingly choose the membrane surface area to suit your process time limitations.

 

[Burtis]

great feedback...thanks