Air slugs entrapped cross‐flow filtration of bacterial suspensions

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Abstract
A novel cross‐flow technique for membrane filtration of bacterial cell suspensions was established. This is an air slugs entrapped cross‐flow method in which air slugs were generated by introducing air into the cross‐flow stream. As air slugs moved along with cross‐flow, the disturbance of cell sublayer formation on membrane surface was enhanced. As a consequence, filtration flux was improved and stabilized. The effect of air slugs on improving filtration flux was more pronounced in filtering gram‐negative Escherichia coli cell than grampositive Brevibacterium flavum cell. Moreover, air slug was about 50% more effective on reducing filtration resistance using ultrafiltration (UF) membrane of 300,000 molecular weight cutoff (MWCO) than microfiltration (MF) membrane of 0.2 μm. ©1993 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.