A Concise Review of Theoretical Models and Numerical Simulations of Membrane Fouling

Membrane fouling can cause severe flux drops and affect the quality of produced water, which is a major obstacle for membrane applications. Great efforts have been made to examine theoretical models and numerical simulations for fouling behavior and mechanisms in the past decades, but there is a lack of literature providing a systematic summary. This work aims to present a state-of-the-art review of the principles, applicability and advantages of fouling theoretical models (i.e., the concentration polarization, cake layer formation and blocking models), and numerical simulations (i.e., computational fluid dynamics, Monte Carlo simulation, and artificial neural networks) for fouling behavior and mechanisms. Through these models and simulations, the behaviors of foulant particles at the microscopic level are analyzed in detail from the perspective of force, energy, and particle trajectory during the fouling process. The concise summary of fouling modeling in this review gives guidelines for the selection and application of models to simulate the membrane fouling process accurately, and the optimization of the operation in membrane-based processes.

Automated summary

This review presents state-of-the-art principles and advantages of fouling theoretical models and numerical simulations for membrane fouling behavior and mechanisms, providing guidelines for accurate simulation and optimization in membrane-based processes.