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Contributions of in-situ and dynamic piezoelectric responses to the mitigation of cake layer fouling in online coagulation-ultrafiltration (C-UF) processes

Yang Zhang,Ziyi Meng,Dongqing Yan,Peng Sun,Qianyu Shang,Ying Liu,Jingang Yao,Jun Wang

Piezoelectric membranes have attracted increasing attention due to their potential to offer pressure-responsive and electromechanical coupling functionalities in pressure-driven filtrations. Despite demonstrated antifouling effectiveness against model foulants, their practical performance within realistic and integrated treatment processes remains inadequately explored. Herein, a piezoelectric PVDF/GO ultrafiltration membrane (PEM) was fabricated and integrated into an online coagulation–ultrafiltration (C–UF) system to mitigate cake layer fouling. During pressure-driven filtration processes, the PEM not only exhibited a self-powered capability with oscillatory output signals (e.g., ∼0.4 V at 30 kPa), but also demonstrated a tunable and markedly enhanced response under dynamic pressure gradients (e.g., ∼1.1 V with a pressure gradient of 2 kPa/s). Based on these observations, a dynamic-pressure-control (DPC) strategy was developed for real-time regulation of piezoelectric output, adaptively responding to the stage-wise progression of cake fouling. Compared with the control membrane, the PEM under DPC operation exhibited ∼60 % lower irreversible filtration resistance and nearly threefold greater cake porosity. Moreover, implementing the DPC procedure for just 3 min per cycle enabled the PEM to sustain robust self-cleaning performance and enhanced permeate quality throughout a multi-cycle filtration test, achieving ∼50 % lower filtration resistance compared to physical cleaning method. Mechanistic analysis suggested that, under piezoelectric activation, the altered floc deposition dynamics and polarization-induced reorganization may act synergistically to shape both the structure and composition of the cake matrix, thereby inhibiting cake growth and subsequent compaction. This work provides a practical operational guidance for retrofitting PEM technology into existing C–UF systems, representing a viable strategy for advancing the application of piezoelectric membranes.