Biofouling detection enables the adoption of effective cleaning strategies for biofouling prevention. This work investigates the use of electrical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) to monitor the biofilm development and the use of electric fields to mitigate biofouling on the surface of gold-coated membranes. The multi-bacterial suspension was injected into a two-electrode crossflow filtration system where the permeate flux and impedance spectra were recorded to monitor the biofilm growth. Permeate flux declined over time while the impedance at low frequency regions (<10 Hz) rapidly decreased with fouling at the early stages of fouling, and then gradually decreased as biofilm matured. The normalized diffusion-related impedance (Rd), an EIS-derived parameter, was extracted to determine the sensitivity of EIS detection. We observed that impedance-based detection was more sensitive to changes as compared to the decline of permeate flux during the early stage of biofouling. With early detection of fouling, fouling mitigation strategies could be applied more effectively. Further, under the same conditions as fouling detection, either applying an intermittent cathodic potential (−1.5 V) or cross-flow flushing delayed the biofilm growth on the electrically conductive membranes (ECMs). EIS sensitivity was repeatably recovered across four cycles of mechanical fouling removal. Hence ECMs were demonstrated to play a dual function: EIS-enabled detection of biofouling evolution and surface biofouling mitigation.

Electrically conductive membranes have shown significant promise in combining conventional separations with in situ contaminant oxidation, but little has been done to consider chlorine removal. This study demonstrates the simultaneous chlorine removal and oxidation of organic compounds during filtration using an electrochemically assisted electrically conductive carbon nanotube (CNT) membrane. As much as 80% of chlorine was removed in the feed by CNT membranes at the initial phase of continuous filtration. The efficacy of these CNT membranes toward chlorine removal was dependent on the mass of CNTs within the membranes and the applied pressure to the membranes, indicating the central role of available CNT active sites and sufficient reaction time. Furthermore, the removal mechanism of chlorine by CNTs was revealed by studying the degradation of benzoic acid and cyclic voltammetry on the membrane surface. Reactive oxidants were generated by the reductive decomposition of chlorine through the catalytic interaction with CNTs. Subsequently, electrical potentials were applied to the CNT membrane surfaces during the filtration of chlorinated feed waters. The simultaneous decomposition of chlorine and oxidation of benzoic acid were significantly enhanced by applying a cathodic current to CNT membranes enabling continuous dechlorination. The cathodic current applied to CNT membranes is believed to regenerate CNT membranes by providing electrons for the reductive decomposition of chlorine. In situ chemical-free dechlorination coupled with membrane filtration offers great opportunity to reducing the environmental impact of desalination, while maximizing the lifetime of reverse osmosis membranes and demonstrating greener approaches available to industrial water treatment.