Determination of Optimal Operating Condition in Nanofiltration (NF) and Reverse Osmosis (RO) During the Treatment of a Tannery Wastewater Stream

Abstract

The aim of this work is the search the best operating condition in batch membrane processes in respect to fouling. The examined case is the purification of tannery wastewater. In particular in this work, the treatment was performed by using two spiral wound membrane modules were used: nanofiltration (NF) and reverse osmosis (RO) membranes. A modified version of the traditional method used to measure critical fluxes of membranes, that is the pressure cycling method, was applied to measure both the critical and the threshold flux on the nanofiltration membrane. Finally, the obtained results were compared from an economical point of view with a conventional biological process to validate the membrane plant as possible alternative to conventional process.