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Detect industrial membrane weaknesses early with the Bürkert Membrane Integrity Test System

Industrial membranes are small but mighty allies in a wide range of engineering applications, especially in the Water industry. Should they fail, problems can quickly arise. Which is why it’s imperative to regularly test the integrity of your water membranes to minimise any risk of downtime and – worse – catastrophic system failures. Greg Wainhouse, Water Field Segment Manager, outlines how Bürkert’s Membrane Integrity Test System can pinpoint problems long before they become a costly burden.   

How industrial membranes can fail

There are two primary ways that an industrial membrane fails. Firstly, they block up, which can be monitored with differential pressure sensors either side of the membrane. A whole bank of these membranes can be used to create one common outlet. The differential pressure from that outlet can be measured across to the other side of the inlets to the filters. However, that doesn’t tell you which one has blocked up. It will just tell you that there is a reduction in capacity within your system.

The second way a water membrane can fail is for a gradual failure in the material, such as seal degradation or membrane abrasion & compression. The raw water that you’re putting in then ends up leaking through. If there’s a blockage there as well, this can cancel out any differential pressure you’d expect to see. If the water filter membrane material fails and there isn’t any blockage there, then you’ll see a marked difference in the differential pressure across the filter.

If there is a blockage there already, you won’t see a differential pressure because the blockage is compensating for the membrane material failing. It is still leaching raw water but the pressure won’t give any indication of this fact. Rather, you have to take a test sample of water off each industrial membrane and analyse it in a lab. This is time-consuming and not all membranes will be tested on a regular basis. If you’ve got large production capabilities then it’s going to take a long time to test each membrane.

Protection for your membrane technology

Bürkert’s Membrane Integrity Test System takes a sample off each water filter membrane and then passes it through a conductivity sensor. As it’s cycling through each membrane it logs the information. It can, for example, take a sample off membrane one, analyse it and store that data. Then it will flush the line out and move on to membrane two. From thereon in it just cycles around, so it’s continuously testing each membrane.

If it sees a breach in the membrane, because the conductivity level has increased too high, then the Membrane Integrity Test System can do one of several things. It can either perform a re-test to unequivocally confirm that there’s a problem or it can provide you with an alarm to advise an operator that this particular membrane requires maintenance. For critical applications, there’s no reason why you can’t put a shut-off valve on there, so you don’t have any high conductivity water passing through to your next process.

We also have a PLC screen for controlling a valve island. We would normally use valve islands for pneumatics but this one has been specially adapted to allow water to flow through it. The idea behind that is that it’s a small, compact system. There’s no reason why you couldn’t fit a valve on the end of each water membrane and then automate those to open and close. However, we think it’s best to flush the line between each one, so we’re reducing sample volumes as well. This gives us much tighter controls and is a pre-built, plug and play solution.

Accurate and repeatable industrial membrane testing

If you’re carrying out a pharmaceutical application, you need to have fully traceable logged data for your historical records. It could also be highly critical to ensure you have ultrapure water going through to your application. Maybe you’re working in the energy market and you don’t want high levels of salts going through to your turbine blade because you can then end up depositing solids onto the turbines. Eventually they may become imbalanced as a result, which can increase wear and tear.

There are various different levels of criticality that are entirely dependent on the application. Some customers may not need to test each membrane on a regular basis. Whereas, others would be well-advised to test them on a continual and ongoing basis. Our Membrane Integrity Test System automated solution provides you with an accurate and repeatable result, and helps to reduce your manpower requirements.

For more information about the Membrane Integrity Test System, or to discuss your application requirements in more detail, please contact our sales team today on +44 (0) 1285 648 720 or email sales.uk@burkert.com.

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