Base-activated persulfate strategy for ceramic membrane cleaning after treatment of natural surface water

The natural organic matters (NOM) have been proved to form the hydraulically irreversible membrane fouling, which limit the application of the membrane in water treatment processes. To solve the membrane fouling caused by NOM, a novel one-step chemical cleaning method for the ceramic membrane derived from the base-activated persulfate oxidation process was developed in this study. When the SiC ceramic membranes was used to filtrate practical river water, the permeate flux dropped 65% as ΔTMP reached 30 kPa. After 2 h immersion of the fouled membrane in the cleaning solution (2 mM PMS and 8 mM NaOH), the flux recovery rate nearly reached 100%. Direct backwash of the membrane by the above cleaning solution further reduced the cleaning time to 25 mins, while achieving similar cleaning effect. Then the cleaned membranes were immersed in NaClO solution to release all the residual foulants, but the fluorescence excitation-emission matrix spectra (EEM) and total organic carbon (TOC) of the solution were found insignificant, which demonstrated the base-activated persulfate strategy had effectively removed the irreversible membrane fouling. Free radical quenching experiments were carried out and·O2- was identified as the dominant ROS responsible for the removal of the membrane foulants. The permeate flux and filtration efficiency of the SiC membrane were stable after 5 consecutive fouling-cleaning cycles, and the membrane structure was not damaged. In summary, the base-activated persulfate strategy is an efficient and cleaner method for SiC membrane cleaning, which is potential to be applied in practical membrane water treatment process.