Membrane Services

Membrane fouling is inevitable, even with the highest quality inlet water; Reverse Osmosis (RO) system. Our Membrane Services are designed to help you manage the high cost of membrane replacement by offering off-site cleaning and membrane exchange services. When regular on-site CIP methods do not provide the necessary results, our off-site cleaning can usually bring the membranes back to within 90% of the original flow capacity and 95% of the mineral rejection.

Membrane Cleaning / Rejuvenation Service

It is no secret that all membranes require periodic cleaning. However, most operators don’t realise that not all cleaning procedures are the same. Simply applying the traditional high pH followed by low pH cleaners, may actually be compounding the problem. For example, in circumstances where bacteria or bio-fouling has occurred, specialised high pH cleaners may need to be applied before introducing low pH cleaners. 

Membrane Autopsy

Membrane autopsies are essential to every membrane plant. They can be performed on high pressure membranes like reverse osmosis (RO) and nanofiltration (NF), or on low pressure membranes such as microfiltration (MF) or ultrafiltration (UF). Performing autopsies on pre-treatment cartridge filters, or even SDI filters can also provide very useful information about contaminants entering the membrane system.

All membrane systems experience a deterioration in performance from time to time. Typical problems that you might see include; 

• a drop in rejection,
• higher transmembrane pressure,
• high pressure drop in a module,
• a decrease in product volume or
• an increasing frequency of cleaning

A membrane autopsy can be a vital tool in identifying the causes of these problems. The membrane autopsy typically involves the removal or one or more membrane modules from your system which then undergoes a series of destructive testing. Testing is conducted on both the membrane material and also any fouling material that is removed from the surface, with the ultimate aim of the process to determine the root cause of the fouling or membrane failure and to provide actionable recommendations to correct to manage it.