Measurements of membrane fouling in lignocellulosic biorefineries by ptychotomography

Membrane fouling and the resulting need for cleaning of membrane processes in lignocellulosic biorefineries has major impact on the process economics and sustainability. The PhD project "Membrane fouling and cleaning in lignocellulosic biorefineries - Optimisation and in situ measurements" to gain a deeper understanding on the mechanism and phenomena of membrane fouling and cleaning. The analytical methods used so far in the project have provided new
qualitative and quantitative knowledge on membrane fouling. However, the approaches were limited to micro-scale, 2D-dimensions and mainly surface effects. Thus this applications aims to gain further understanding on the complexity of membrane fouling and cleaning on nano-scale using 2D- and 3D-ptycho-tomography. The project is a co-operation between the membrane group
in the Department of Chemical Engineering at Lund University and X-ray tomography and SAXS/WAXS specialists from RISE and is supported by Alfa Laval as industrial supporter of the project. It is foreseen that the project will provide new insights in fouling and cleaning related to membrane processes in lignocellulosic biorefineries which can be also related to other membrane processes e.g. in the water and food industry. As such, the results will not only benefit the 15 billion Euro global membrane market but also the UN sustainability goals 6, 7, 12 and 14.