To comparatively assess the Evapoporometry (EP) technique vis-à-vis the Liquid-Liquid Displacement Porosimetry (LLDP) technique, the pore size distributions, mean pore diameters (d_avg) and porosities of five polymeric (namely, nylon, PES, PTFE, PET and PVDF) and one inorganic (namely, alumina) UF/tight MF membranes were quantified by both techniques. For all the membranes, the pore size ranges were generally narrower and the pore size distributions had distinctive peaks for the LLDP technique. For the nylon, PES and PTFE membranes, the d_avg values obtained from the two techniques agreed well. However, for the PET and PVDF membranes, the differences were twofold due to the higher pressure needed for the LLDP tests. Specifically, for PET, the d_avg value obtained via EP was half that via LLDP, because the higher pressure compacted the lower mechanical strength polymer, leading to pore closure. On the other hand, for PVDF, due to the rubber nature, the higher pressure caused the pores to be stretched, leading to larger pores. As for the alumina membrane, because of the more ideal cylindrical pores, the d⁴-weighting of the LLDP measurement gave a greater d_avg value than that of the d²-weighting of the EP measurement. Also, porosity measurements were erroneous for LLDP if the active layer cannot be precisely quantified. With respect to MWCO, while EP does not explicitly quantify this, the LLDP generally over-estimated the values, because of the errors associated with the measurement of the first (largest) pores at the lowest pressures.

Evapoporometry (EP) determines the pore-size distribution (PSD) based on the Kelvin equation that relates the evaporation rate of a volatile wetting liquid to the pore diameter. EP offers several advantages relative to other PSD characterization methods. EP is adapted here to characterize only the continuous pores rather than all the pores. This adaptation involves sequentially injecting a volatile wetting liquid under the membrane followed by a denser, non-volatile, non-wetting liquid to seal the pores as the overlying volatile liquid evaporates. EP characterization of only the continuous pores shifts the PSD based on all the pores towards smaller pores as indicated by a decrease in the average pore diameter from 15.2 nm to 13.2 nm for a 500 kDa PVDF membrane and from 12.8 nm to 11.7 nm for a 300 kDa PES membrane. The difference between the total pore mass for the two EP characterization protocols was 46.2% and 36.3% for the PVDF and PES, respectively. This provides an assessment of the interconnectivity of the pores, which was quite high as would be expected for these two solvent-cast membranes. By injecting an underlying, non-volatile, non-wetting liquid, EP can be adapted to use non-wetting volatile liquids of interest in some applications.

Membrane-based filtration is promising for the treatment of oily wastewater with stable micron-sized oil droplets, but is unfortunately limited by the inevitable membrane fouling phenomenon. To advance the understanding on membrane fouling by oil emulsion, this study made use of the direct observation through the membrane (DOTM) technique to experimentally visualize the evolution of fouling and determine critical flux, and also molecular dynamics simulations to unveil the interfacial interactions and behaviors underlying the different fouling behaviors. Three oil emulsion types with similar mean droplet sizes were studied, namely, one without surfactant, one stabilized by sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS; a negatively charged surfactant) and one stabilized by dodecyltrimethylammonium bromide (DTAB; a positively charged surfactant). DOTM results indicate that the critical flux was the highest in the absence of surfactant and lowest for the DTAB-stabilized ones, while simulation results indicate that the interaction energies are clearly different among the different oil emulsion types. Both hence affirm that the presence of surfactant and different surfactant type distinctly changes the fouling tendencies. The key conclusions on the different fouling tendencies among the three oil emulsion types are summarized as follows. Firstly, the highest critical flux in the absence of any surfactant is linked to greatest oil-water interaction and least oil-membrane interaction, both of which cause the oil molecule to prefer being in the bulk aqueous feed. The radial distribution function (RDF) further substantiates this. Secondly, the higher critical flux exhibited by the SDS-stabilized oil emulsion compared to the DTAB-stabilized ones could be attributed to the negative charge of the former. Simulations affirm the comparatively greater oil-membrane repulsion through the RDF profile, lower oil-membrane interaction and higher oil-water interaction of the SDS-stabilized oil emulsion. Thirdly, despite surfactants generally have a stabilizing effect on oil emulsions, DOTM images show that coalescence was most extensive for the DTAB-stabilized oil emulsion, because of the greatest oil-membrane attraction and least oil-oil repulsion. Coupling both experiments and simulations, this study enhanced the mechanistic understanding on the effect of surfactant on membrane fouling by emulsions of the same oil.