(567d) Adhesion and Scaling Mechanism of Gypsum on the Commercial Microfiltration Membranes

In view of the scaling problem in the membrane water treatment process, the adhesion mechanism of gypsum crystals on different commercial microfiltration membranes in aqueous solution was firstly investigated using experimental methods and molecular dynamics simulations. The membrane chemistry is decisive to its adhesion potential to gypsum crystals. Compared to the hydrophobic membranes, hydrophilic membranes have higher tendency to scaling by the gypsum crystals. The number of polar groups in the membrane molecules has higher effect on the adhesion energy than the variety of polar groups. The anti-adhering properties of the membranes increase with decreasing adhesion energy. Physical structure of membranes was also crucial to its adhesion tendency under the condition that the adhesion energy of membranes was close to each other. The larger pore that exceeds a proper range leads to the decline of adhesion mass. Subsequently, the membranes potentially used for membrane distillation were predicted in terms of their anti-scaling potential using the same simulations. This article provides an insight for the mechanism of gypsum scaling, and gives the prediction on the anti-scaling performance of the potential polymer membranes in membrane distillation.