In Situ Visualization of Membrane Fouling Evolution during Ultrafiltration Using Label-Free Hyperspectral Light Sheet Fluorescence Imaging

Profound understanding of fouling behaviors and underlying mechanisms is fundamentally important for fouling control in membrane-based environmental applications. Therefore, it entails novel noninvasive analytical approaches for in situ characterizing the formation and development of membrane fouling processes. This work presents a characterization approach based on hyperspectral light sheet fluorescence microscopy (HSPEC-LSFM), which is capable of discriminating various foulants and providing their 2-dimensional/3-dimensional spatial distributions on/in membranes in a label-free manner. A fast, highly sensitive and noninvasive imaging platform was established by developing a HSPEC-LSFM system and further extending it to incorporate a laboratory-scale pressure-driven membrane filtration system. Hyperspectral data sets with a spectral resolution of ∼1.1 nm and spatial resolution of ∼3 μm as well as the temporal resolution of ∼8 s/plane were obtained, and the fouling formation and development process of foulants onto membrane surfaces, within the pores and on the pore walls were clearly observed during the ultrafiltration of protein and humic substances solutions. Pore blocking/constriction at short times while cake growth/concentration polarization at longer times was found to have coupled effects for the flux decline in these filtration tests, and yet the contribution of each effect as well as the transition of the governing mechanisms was found distinct. These results demonstrate in situ label-free characterization of membrane fouling evolution with the recognition of foulant species during filtration and provide new insights into membrane fouling. This work offers a powerful tool to investigate dynamic processes for a wide range of membrane-based explorations.