Method for fluorescence-based fouling forecasting and optimization in membrane filtration operations

A method of forecasting the accumulation of foulants on a membrane during the course of fluid filtration operation, characterized by the steps of:

• a. measuring fluorescence intensities for feed, retentate and permeate fluid samples at time intervals of fluid filtration operation to generate fluorescence intensity values corresponding to each fluid sample;
• b. rearranging the fluorescence intensity values to produce a data matrix, wherein each row of the data matrix contains fluorescence data points corresponding to each fluid sample;
• c. applying principal component analysis to the data matrix to generate principal component scores, wherein each principal component score represents a quantity of a corresponding foulant species group within each fluid sample;
• d. performing balances on the principal component scores by calculation of the accumulation of each group of foulant species on the membrane, wherein the accumulation of each group of foulant species on the membrane is calculable at any given time interval (t) of fluid filtration operation;
• and
• e. calculating membrane resistance at a given time interval (t) of fluid filtration operation by correlating to balanced principal component scores at time interval t.