Ultrafiltration systems

Ultrafiltration is an efficient way to remove solids and suspended particles from water. Ultrafiltration systems can remove all suspended particles in water at the microscopic level.
Ultrafiltration is a water purification process that uses a hollow fiber or a sheet membrane to mechanically filter water containing very small particles. The ultrafiltration system uses this very fine membrane technology to filter particles up to 0.025 microns. This means that an ultrafiltration system works at the micro level and literally removes all suspended solids from the water.

Types of filtration operations

Ultrafiltration systems can be designed based on one of the following three methods, and it is important to design AquArya modules in such a way that they are capable of operating in all these conditions.

Cross flow: In this case, a portion of the feed is continuously rotated or discarded in the system to prevent the accumulation of solids on the surface of the membrane.
Dead End: In this case, the system will not be discarded. The process of clearing the membrane takes place when it is blocked. More recovery and less energy consumption are the strengths of this mode.
Dead end with periodic flushing: In this case, too, there is no continuous flow. The membrane is periodically flashed to remove the deposited solids on its surface.
Applications and benefits:
The main application of the ultrafiltration process is in water and wastewater treatment. Due to the need of industries and organizations today to recycle wastewater for reuse, the ultrafiltration process is an important and indelible part of the water and wastewater recovery cycle. Other applications for ultrafiltration include:

• Dairy industry in milk condensation and cheese production
• Juice clarification
• Filtration in oil and gas and petrochemical industries

The benefits of the ultrafiltration membrane process can be summarized as follows:

• Due to the pore size of 0.03 to 0.2 microns, ultrafiltration membranes can remove all pathogens in one filtration step.
• In common water disinfection processes such as chlorination, ozonation, the use of ultraviolet lamps and…. The killed or inactivated pathogen remains in the water, but in the ultrafiltration process, the pathogens are completely removed from the water.
• Due to the larger pore size of reverse osmosis and nanofiltration processes, the ultrafiltration process, along with the complete removal of pathogens, does not change the composition of water solutes.
• As mentioned above, the operating pressure for the bar ultrafiltration process is 2-0.1. Therefore, by using the ultrafiltration process, energy consumption and therefore the operating costs of the refining process are greatly reduced.
• Because ultrafiltration membranes are used, particles larger than 10 nm are removed and the lower cost of consumable membranes allows the use of ultrafiltration as a pre-treatment of expensive reverse osmosis membranes.
• The recovery rate (ratio of crop to feed) in ultrafiltration membranes is about 95%.
  Here, the applications of ultrafiltration in various industries have been studied.