Purification of produced water using oscillatory membrane filtration

A new method of purification of produced water is reviewed. Recently membrane oscillation for separating solid particles and liquids drops has attracted researchers globally. Metallic slotted pore membranes were used in the experiments. Membrane oscillation generates a shear rate that drives particles, oil drops away from the membrane surface and, hence, fouling is reduced. It is shown that reduction of the fouling is directly related to the intensity of the membrane oscillation. It is shown that membrane oscillation results in decreasing pore blocking and it was found that pore blocking was also reduced with increase of the membrane oscillation frequency. The latter conclusion was confirmed both experimentally and theoretically. The applied shear rate has a strong influence on the larger particles as compared to the smaller ones and therefore, cut-off of separating particles increases with the membrane oscillation. The method was suggested to predict concentration of particles in the permeate. The experiments reviewed were mainly on separation of drops of both vegetable oil and crude oil from aqueous produced water.