A NOVEL RIG DESIGN FOR ULTRAFILTRATION AND MICROFILTRATION EXPERIMENTS

The versatile rig for crossflow ultrafiltration and microfiltration experiments described in this paper can be operated at various concentrations of the feed stream by using a feed-and-bleed mode, either at controlled permeation flux or at controlled transmembrane pressure. Transmembrane pressure can be set as a static counterpressure through a bleed valve, or as a dynamic counterpressure achieved by circulating the permeate cocurrent to the retentate, to maintain an equal transmembrane pressure profile along the filtration path. The rig is equipped with extra independent controls (retentate and permeate temperature, retentate tangential flow velocity, retentate pressure) to enable to master filtration procedures by setting variables to the desired values through any operational pathway. It allows real time data monitoring and storing by a computer through a multichannel analyzer.