Wastewater treatment by ultrafiltration system, considering the effects of operating conditions: experimental and modeling

摘要

This study focuses on the effects of operating conditions including cross-flow velocity, oil concentration, transmembrane pressure, temperature, and pH on the normalized flux, relative fouling and turbidity rejection of a polymeric membrane in ultrafiltration (UF) system of oily wastewater treatment. Although normalized flux rose with increasing CFV, TMP, temperature, and pH, it decreased versus oil concentration. Increasing CFV, temperature, and pH reduced the relative fouling, while a rise in oil concentration and TMP increased the relative fouling. Moreover, an increase in CFV, oil content and pH increased turbidity rejection and rising TMP and temperature decreased the rejection. In this study, the evolutionary polynomial regression (EPR) approach is adopted on three parametric studies; one is the normalized flux, second is the relative fouling, and the third is the turbidity rejection. These parameters were evaluated by EPR as a function of mentioned independent variables. By comparing the experimental data and predicted values, the maximum and minimum average errors were obtained as 8.29 and 0.0005%, respectively. The maximum and minimum values of coefficient of determination were 1 and 0.902, respectively. Therefore, EPR would be a potential candidate to describe membrane performance in UF systems.