Air slugs entrapped cross-flow filtration of bacterial suspensions.
A novel cross-flow technique for membrane filtration of bacterial cell suspensions was established. This is an air slugs entrapped cross-flow method in which air slugs were generated by introducing air into the cross-flow stream. As air slugs moved along with cross-flow, the disturbance of cell sublayer formation on membrane surface was enhanced. As a consequence, filtration flux was improved and stabilized. The effect of air slugs on improving filtration flux was more pronounced in filtering gram-negative Escherichia coli cell than gram-positive Brevibacterium flavum cell. Moreover, air slug was about 50% more effective on reducing filtration resistance using ultrafiltration (UF) membrane of 300,000 molecular weight cutoff (MWCO) than microfiltration (MF) membrane of 0.2 microm.
Lee
C K
CK
Department of Chemical Engineering, National Taiwan Institute of Technology, Taipei, Taiwan 10772, Republic of China.
Chang
W G
WG
Ju
Y H
YH