MFI-UF Testing

Author: Michael Gerdjikian

After having various problems with the spectrofluorometer, I took a break to work on the MFI-UF tests. Although the process itself is very simple, it took me a while to understand many of the concepts behind it. In order to run the tests, extra pure MilliQ water is filtered through a membrane at constant flux and the pressure is recorded over a 15 minute interval. This is necessary in order to get the membrane resistance. Then, the sample water (for example RO feed water) is filtered through the membrane at constant flux for 30 minutes and again the pressure is recorded over time. Using this, the MFI-UF is calculated during the time of constant pressure increase over time (time during cake filtration). Since there is a decent amount of time in-between tests, it sometimes got boring. However, I used as much of that time as I could talking to Mamoun and reading through his thesis to get a better understanding of the purpose. It was very helpful to have him at my disposal whenever I was reading something that I didn’t fully understand. He was patient and talked me through it all and now I am able to understand a lot more about the testing than when I first began.