In addition to the pretreatments (e.g. coagulation, adsorption, and
pre-oxidation), it is also important that the different operation
conditions can reduce membrane fouling to some extent. As previously
reported, fouling is formed because of the impurities rejected by or
adsorbed on the membrane surface, and some complicated interactions
then may happen between the impurities and the membrane
surface. Therefore, theoretically, there should be a reasonable way to
apply some proper operation or cleaning strategies to inhibit the
complicated reaction before it happens, and their combined benefits
could be an ideal way to control or reduce the membrane fouling. The
strategy must be based on a better understanding of the mechanismof
membrane fouling when ultrafiltration is applied for drinking water
production. And the control of different fouling mechanismor foulants
in the ultrafiltration process may need different running and cleaning
strategies.