MEMBRANE SEPARATION APPARATUS AND DESALINATION METHOD

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a membrane separation apparatus excellent in efficiency and economical properties which is capable of efficiently conducting the filtration membrane separation, and which easily prevents the cloggings of the surface of a membrane even if the operating pressure made to act on a raw water side is low, and to provide a desalination treatment method. SOLUTION: The membrane separation apparatus 4 has a micro-bubble generation device 10 at the entrance part of a filtration membrane module 20 composed by charging a filtration element 21 into a pressure vessel 22 and can conduct the filtration treatment of water efficiently because the micro-bubbles generated in the raw water under pressurized conditions acts on the surface of the membrane without loss and a sufficient effective pressure acts on the filtration membrane even if the operation pressure applied to the raw water side is reduced. The micro-bubble generation device 10 is provided with an aspirator 110 utilizing the Venturi effect and a gas supply part 120 to supply the gas in a pressurized state to the aspirator 110. These components are integrated into the pressure vessel 22 constituting the filtration membrane module. COPYRIGHT: (C)2009,JPO&INPIT