Evaluating the performance of gravity-driven membrane filtration as desalination pretreatment of shale gas flowback and produced water

摘要: Abstract The shale gas extraction industry generates a large quantity of highly contaminated flowback and produced water (FPW), with great impacts on human health the environment. In this study, gravity-driven membrane (GDM) filtration was evaluated over 612-day period as pre-treatment FPW for its subsequent desalination. various investigated GDM systems showed similar contaminant removals, their steady-state fluxes (i.e., 0.65–0.82 L/(m2·h)) were not significantly correlated to configurations or hydrostatic pressures. flux decline primarily due reversible resistance, which accounted proportion (>89%) total hydraulic resistance. Compared traditional ultrafiltration, pretreatment resulted in better desalination performance nanofiltration reverse osmosis step, characterized by higher organic removal generally permeate fluxes. More than 60 bacterial genera 8 eukaryotic detected FPW, kingdoms Alveolata Stramenopiles (within eukaryote domains) reported first time. biofouling layer GDMs had lower diversity but feed water. community, including Alveolata, Fungi, Metazoa, played major role behavior.