Modelling and experimental verification of portable ultrafiltration system for drinking water production / Azman Ariffin

Azman , Ariffin (2025) Modelling and experimental verification of portable ultrafiltration system for drinking water production / Azman Ariffin. Masters thesis, Universiti Malaya.

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Abstract

Ultrafiltration (UF) effectively removes contaminants to yield clean drinking water by allowing water to flow through a semipermeable membrane which incorporate microscopic pores ranging from 0.01 to 0.1 μm. To determine the effectiveness of the portable system, water quality analysis has been carried out to determine if the system produce filtered water from a river, lake and synthetic water source achieving the drinking water standards. The parameters examined are turbidity, color, presence of bacteria and the Water Quality Index (WQI) value. The results show that this portable UF (PUF) unit produces purified water that meets quality standards, achieving reduction in turbidity from 24.4 NTU of river water to less than 1 NTU, reduction in colour from 300 TCU of river water to less than 15 TCU and the WQI being upgraded from Class II to Class I grade water, which is from 86% to 94% for river water. Moreover, the system demonstrates its ability to produce microbiologically safe drinking water by eliminating the total coliform along with all Escherichia coli (E-coli) bacteria that come from the raw water sources. A simple model of the system using Darcy’s Law was also obtained to predict the permeate flux and transmembrane pressure (TMP). Initially, simulation was done using nominal value, as taken from the literature, four (4) parameters i.e. the membrane hydraulic resistance, initial rapid fouling constant, mass transfer coefficient and foulant bulk concentration. Using the Evolutionary Programming (EP) technique, an enhanced model with revised parameters was produced by reducing the error between the model with these nominal values and the experimental values. The four parameters were optimized as input variables and interaction among them was observed, while TMP and permeate flux were considered as response attributes. With the updated model, the average error between the model and experiment was reduced from 32% to 9%. This was further validated with new data taken from experiment. This improved model with the updated parameter was then used to predict the TMP and compared with the experimental value. Contrasting the optimized model with the existing model indicates that the optimized model predicts the membrane performance better, making it competent as a reliable model for the purification of water using the in-house built portable UF (PUF) system while meeting water quality standard and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) on Drinking water, everyone should have equitable and universal access to safe and affordable drinking water by the year 2030.

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