COAGULATION OF COLLOIDS IN A BOUNDARY-LAYER DURING CROSS-FLOW FILTRATION

A force model, initially developed for unstirred filtration of colloid s, is transposed to cross-flow and allows a fair prediction of fluxes in various conditions of flow and ionic strength in the case of sub-mi cron particles. It suggests that if one assumes that colloidal fouling is due to a limit, in the boundary layer, in the colloid suspension s tability challenged by drag forces, then the filtration of macromolecu lar size particle solutions and of colloidal suspensions may be descri bed via the same approach. This model may be compared to the gel layer model. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V.