page_title: Microfiltration
section_title: General principles
hierarchical_section_title: Microfiltration / General principles
caption_attribution_description: Overall setup for the Microfiltration system General Schematic
context_page_description: Microfiltration is a type of filtration physical process where a contaminated fluid is passed through a special pore-sized membrane to separate microorganisms and suspended particles from process liquid. It is commonly used in conjunction with various other separation processes such as ultrafiltration and reverse osmosis to provide a product stream which is free of undesired contaminants.
context_section_description: Microfiltration usually serves as a pre-treatment for other separation processes such as ultrafiltration, and a post-treatment for granular media filtration. The typical particle size used for microfiltration ranges from about 0.1 to 10 μm. In terms of approximate molecular weight these membranes can separate macromolecules of molecular weights generally less than 100,000 g/mol. The filters used in the microfiltration process are specially designed to prevent particles such as, sediment, algae, protozoa or large bacteria from passing through a specially designed filter. More microscopic, atomic or ionic materials such as water (H₂O), monovalent species such as Sodium (Na⁺) or Chloride (Cl⁻) ions, dissolved or natural organic matter, and small colloids and viruses will still be able to pass through the filter.
  The suspended liquid is passed through at a relatively high velocity of around 1–3 m/s and at low to moderate pressures (around 100-400 kPa) parallel or tangential to the semi-permeable membrane in a sheet or tubular form.  A pump is commonly fitted onto the processing equipment to allow the liquid to pass through the membrane filter. There are also two pump configurations, either pressure driven or vacuum. A differential or regular pressure gauge is commonly attached to measure the pressure drop between the outlet and inlet streams.  See Figure 1 for a general setup.
  The most abundant use of microfiltration membranes are in the water, beverage and bio-processing industries (see below). The exit process stream after treatment using a micro-filter has a recovery rate which generally ranges to about 90-98 %.
caption: Figure 1: Overall setup for a microfiltration system
exif: {}