Economic analysis and design of crossflow microfiltration for water treatment systems

Membrane technology is an emerging scientific field and is being widely used in many industrial manufacturing processes and also for desalination. Recently its application in water and wastewater treatment systems is gaining popularity in developed countries where in the effluent wastewater and potable water standards are becoming more and more stringent. The recent developments in microfiltration enable it to be competitive with other conventional water treatment systems. This paper presents a design procedure for crossflow microfiltration (CFMF) incorporating a comprehensive flux improvement technique. Also it gives an economical comparison with a conventional treatment system. The simulation results have shown that for small treatment plants (similar to 4 ML/d) with medium turbidity water, having greater fraction of finer particles, the single-stage treatment with CFMF can be cheaper than that of a conventional treatment system. The cost savings are found to be between 6% and 12%; larger savings are for the influents with a greater fraction of finer particles. Further, some of the advantages of the CFMF process over conventional water treatment systems are discussed. However, as there are many assumptions involved in this study, further research is warranted to generalize the above conclusions.