Experimental and ANFIS modeling for fouling analysis of oily wastewater treatment using ultrafiltration

This work presents an experimental investigation and modeling of fouling mechanisms involved in ultrafiltration of oily wastewater streams. Hermia's models were used to investigate the fouling mechanisms. The experimental results performed at different cross flow velocity (CFV) (0.5, 1, and 1.5m/s) and transemembrane pressure (TMP) (1.5, 3, and 4.5 bar) showed that the best fit to the experimental data corresponds to the cake layer formation model followed by the intermediate blocking model for all the experimental conditions tested. Furthermore, this work explores the application of the ANFIS as a model to predict permeation in ultrafiltration (UF) system. The selected experimental data were trained by a hybrid learning algorithm combining the forward pass and the backward pass. The good agreement of the model with experimental data underscores the ease and accuracy of the ANFIS in modeling such a complex systems. (C) 2012 Curtin University of Technology and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.