Liquid filters capable of removing nanoparticles are in great demand from manufacturing industries which require high-purity water and chemicals. To meet the industry's requirement, the aims of the liquid filtration study in the Center for Filtration Research are to 1) explore methods to characterize liquid-borne nanoparticles and 2) apply these methods to study the performance of nanometer-rated liquid filters. We applied the aerosolization method, a nebulizer-Scanning Mobility Particle Sizer system, and the Nanoparticle Tracking Analysis technique to count and size liquid-borne nanoparticles. 50 mm- rated membrane filters have been tested with polystyrene latex and gold particles with different sizes (80, 50 and 30 nm) and the retention efficiencies were determined by both particle counting techniques. The filtration efficiencies as a function of particle size and particle loading were determined and the results were compared with filtration models. The advantages and limitations of the particle characterization methods, findings from the filter evaluation and our plan to model the filtration process will be discussed.
展开▼
