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Organic conditioning films have been shown to alter properties of surfaces, such as hydrophobicity and surface free energy. Furthermore, initial bacterial adhesion has been shown to depend on the conditioning film surface properties as opposed to the properties of the virgin surface. For the particular case of nanofiltration membranes under permeate flux conditions, however, the conditioning film thickens to form a thin fouling layer. This study hence sought to determine if a thin fouling layer deposited on a nanofiltration membrane under permeate flux conditions governed bacterial adhesion in the same manner as a conditioning film on a surface. Thin fouling layers (less than 50 μm thick) of humic acid or alginic acid were formed on Dow Filmtec NF90 membranes and analysed using Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM), confocal microscopy and surface energy techniques. Fluorescent microscopy was then used to quantify adhesion of Pseudomonas fluorescens bacterial cells onto virgin or fouled membranes under filtration conditions. It was found that instead of adhering on or into the organic fouling layer, the bacterial cells penetrated the thin fouling layer and adhered directly to the membrane surface underneath. Contrary to what surface energy measurements of the fouling layer would indicate, bacteria adhered to a greater extent onto clean membranes (24 ± 3% surface coverage) than onto those fouled with humic acid (9.8 ± 4%) or alginic acid (7.5 ± 4%). These results were confirmed by AFM measurements which indicated that a considerable amount of energy (10 −7 J/μm) was dissipated when attempting to penetrate the fouling layers compared to adhering onto clean NF90 membranes (10 −15 J/μm). The added resistance of this fouling layer was thusly seen to reduce the number of bacterial cells which could reach the membrane surface under permeate conditions. This research has highlighted an important difference between fouling layers for the particular case of nanofiltration membranes under permeate flux conditions and surface conditioning films which should be considered when conducting adhesion experiments under filtration conditions. It has also shown AFM to be an integral tool for such experiments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: In this paper, a novel submerged ultrafiltration (UF) membrane coagulation bioreactor (MCBR) process was evaluated for drinking water treatment at a hydraulic retention time (HRT) as short as 0.5h. The MCBR performed well not only in the elimination of particulates and microorganisms, but also in almost complete nitrification and phosphate removal. As compared to membrane bioreactor (MBR), MCBR achieved much higher removal efficiencies of organic matter in terms of total organic carbon (TOC), permanganate index (CODMn), dissolved organic carbon (DOC) and UV absorbance at 254nm (UV254), as well as corresponding trihalomethanes formation potential (THMFP) and haloacetic acids formation potential (HAAFP), due to polyaluminium chloride (PACl) coagulation in the bioreactor. However, the reduction of biodegradable dissolved organic carbon (BDOC) and assimilable organic carbon (AOC) by MCBR was only 8.2% and 10.1% higher than that by MBR, indicating that biodegradable organic matter (BOM) was mainly removed through biodegradation. On the other hand, the trans-membrane pressure (TMP) of MCBR developed much lower than that of MBR, which implies that coagulation in the bioreactor could mitigate membrane fouling. It was also identified that the removal of organic matter was accomplished through the combination of three unit effects: rejection by UF, biodegradation by microorganism and coagulation by PACl. During filtration operation, a fouling layer was formed on the membranes surface of both MCBR and MBR, which functioned as a second membrane for further separating organic matter. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]