Research Progress in Biofouling of Reverse Osmosis for Municipal Wastewater Advanced Reuse

Municipal wastewater reuse is a valuable means that can be one of the possible solutions to solve the crisis of water resources.Reverse osmosis (RO) is the key technology that ensures the highest water quality for advanced wastewater reclamation.The major types of RO membranes fouling in advanced wastewater reclamation are inorganic salt,organic,colloidal and microbiological foulants precipitation.The biofouling governed by bacterial biofilm formation is the major concern due to the complex.Based on the analysising results of the domestic and foreign researches and documents on RO membrane biofouling the regular change patterns of the permeate flux and the salt rejection along with biofouling were expounded,a series of analysis on RO biofouling characteristics,related theory and the influencing factors,the biofouling assessing method was conducted in order to control and minimize negative effects and elucidate the mechanisms governing the decline in RO membrane performance caused by cell deposition and biofilm growth,and the emphasis is on the analysis of microbial and EPS on biofilm formation.By putting forward the key researches in the future,the article hopes to achieve the target to provide a guidance for the analysis and reduction of the practical engineering biofouling.