Journal of Membrane Science & Technology

Abstract

Study of Membrane Fouling and Trihalomethane Formation in Reverse Osmosis Desalination Pilot Unit

Benamar DAHMANI and Mustapha CHABANE

The objective of this research is to study the combined effect of natural organic matter of benisaf sea water (west of Algeria) on the trihalomethane formation and reverse osmosis membrane fouling. The chlorination method for disinfection of sea water in the pre-treatment step is widely used on several RO desalination plants, which present a disadvantage such as the trihalomethane produced caused by the reactivity of natural organic matter with chlorine. The THM formation on pretreated feed sea water and permeate will be also evaluated by monitoring using several parameters such as Total organic carbon (TOC), Specific ultraviolet visible absorption (SUVA), Ultraviolet absorption at 254 nm (UV254) . Reverse osmosis pilot plant unit has been chosen to determine the membrane fouling will be determined using ATR-FTIR spectra of clean and fouled membrane and atomic force microscopy (AFM) to assess the membrane fouling.