Soduim alginate is known to be extracted from algal/bacterial cell wall, and I found in some membrane fouling studies where they used it to test membrane anti-fouling activity. I'm still not sure if they are using soduim alginate to represent bio-foulants, or scalents?
Thanks in advance,
ruqaia
Sodium alginate is a model organic foulant. For more details, please see Article A review of reverse osmosis membrane fouling and control strategies
Thank you Muhammad Qasim , since bio-fouling is one example of organic fouling, can we consider SA as model biofoulant?
Thank you Muhammad Qasim, I was wondering because in some research articles where they developed antibiofouling surfaces, the model biofoulant used were either BSA and sometime SA.
Muhammad Qasim Phil Geis
check the following: https://reader.elsevier.com/reader/sd/pii/S0960852417302092?token=0F8E7A449C78F4EB6061B9952C55243F746D8297F10A96E6950D4BC24AE2FC67F9C1C2989EC44CA3ADD03659E396BA70 (in MF)
https://ac.els-cdn.com/S0376738816300187/1-s2.0-S0376738816300187-main.pdf?_tid=e44c1935-7667-4f7d-b469-badb19a11e39&acdnat=1543976445_e3f47bb10039a0ac1124f3501d39d596 (in MD)
Actually the majority of the articles are using actual bacterial strains in biofouling tests, but also some use to SA, and BSA. But, I kind also agree their logic, as bacterial secretions (the root of biofouling problem) are organic materials weather proteins or saccharides. and soduim alginate is extracted from algae cell wall, maybe can be used to mimic living/dead bacterial adhesion. BSA is to mimic protein adsorption.
I'm still not fully sure.
I used sodium alginate in one published paper of mine in Chemosphere. It is a very clear way to show fouling resistance of a membrane. However, I call it as organic fouling. When you say biofouling, I expect to see living or death organisms on membrane surface rather than alginate, BSA or humic acid layer.
@Numan Yanar thank you.. biofouling in real system involves secretions (proteins, saccarides etc ) resultinf from multiple types of microbes to help in cell-cell communications eventually biofilm formation, that might also answer why some consider BSA/HA/SA as a general biofoulant in addition to bacteria, algae, yeast .. etc. But yes, they are commonly referred as organic foulant. Although bacteria are also organic living particles.
Numan - can you share the citation?
As you can see from the citations - "validation" was not so much the objective as reduction of variables to study isolated phenomena in specific applications. What is the application/environment of your interest? SA is not for example likely to be a valid model for staph aureus EPS/biofilm in which DNA, protein, NAG polymers and teichoic acid all have structural roles.
Dr. Phil Geis , Thank you for your interest. I agree with your opinion about its validation for biofouling studies.
For my research, I have used SA for testing membrane surface fouling under an artificial waste water solution for a spacer study. I preferred SA since it is more convenient for the comparison of foulant thicknesses on membrane surfaces.
Article Investigation of the performance behavior of a forward osmos...
Dear Dr Phil Geis, I am sorry for my late response. I have just seen your request after a long while. Here is my publication. You may also see about the characterization through CLSM https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1226086X1930646X
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