| Performance Evaluation of Ceramic Membrane Based
Process for Microalgal Biomass Harvesting: Analyzing the
Effect of Membrane Pore Sizes, Process Optimization and
Fouling Behavior |
Anirban Ray,a, b Swachchha Majumdarb and Sourja Ghosha, b, *
Pages : 229-238
DOI : 10.1080/0371750X.2023.2229395 |
| Abstract |
| Microalgal biofuel emerges as a potential resource of renewable energy in view of
global energy demand and increasing greenhouse gases. However, substantial
challenges of efficient up-concentrating of biomass act as a bottleneck in large scale
production of biofuel. The study is aimed towards unravelling the obstacles
encountered during dewatering of biomass from mixed-microalgae consortia using
ceramic membrane based process with varying pore sizes in the microfiltration (MF)
and ultrafiltration (UF) range. For clay and alumina based MF membrane, 1.2 ?m pore
size (average) and for alumina supported nano-alumina coated UF membrane, ~0.01
?m pore size (average) was used. The effect of various recirculation parameters was
studied for process optimization. Resistance-in-series model was employed for
analyzing fouling behavior of the membranes. MF membrane was observed to have
better harvesting efficiency than the UF counterpart in terms of productivity (124.41).
Optimum permeate flux of microalgal suspension was found to be 315.29 L.m–2.h–1
for MF membrane. Regeneration of membranes by air assisted backpulsing process
showed up to 97.71% of flux recovery for MF membrane. Volume reduction factor/
membrane area (371) was found to be considerably high compared to various reported
studies. The study highlighted efficient harvesting of microalgae using indigenously
developed ceramic MF membrane integrated filtration towards cost-effective
production of biofuel.
[Keywords: Microalgal biomass harvesting, Ceramic membrane, Cross-flow filtration,
Mixed microalgae consortia, Resistance in series (RIS) model] |
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