Spiral-Wound Membrane Performance Monitoring for System Optimization

Spiral-wound water purification elements (e.g. reverse osmosis, nanofiltration) were developedin the 1960s in response to increasing water demand. Since then, the need for pure water has evolved to include not only the residential but also industrial sectors as most product developments and processes require ultrapure water. As the need for this water continues to increase and supplies dwindle, the spiral-wound element facilities have been forced to increase in efficiency, including performing at higher recoveries and tackling more challenging water sources. Innovative techniques have emerged to give further insight into system performance, such as parallel or online sampling devices and full spiral-wound elements. Each of these has shown benefits and limitations. The content of this paper is to discuss in brief some of these methods and to introduce a self-contained, spiral-wound membrane sampling device.

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