From Microfiltration to Reverse Osmosis

Microfiltration commonly abbreviated to MF is a type of low pressure physical filtration process where a contaminated fluid or gas is passed through a special pore sized filter media to separate micro organisms and suspended particles from process liquid or gas. 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 contaminents. Microfiltration usually serves as a pre-treatment for other separation processes such as ultrafiltration and a post treatment for the granular media filtration. The typical particle size used for microfiltration ranges from about 0.1 to 10 µm. Our particulate microfibre filter elements, our coalescing microfibre filter elements as well as our filter media equipped with a membrane are used within the micro- and ultrafiltration process and specially designed  to prevent particles from passing through.

In contrast to filter systems containing hollow fibers or membranes our microfiber glass filter elements use fibres which form a very thight labyrinth with smaller and larger channels causing particles and aerosols to constantly change direction until they are caught by the glass fibers. Within the larger areas an enormous amount of dirt is held in comparison to the size of the filter element itself or other types of elements. Read more about the coalescing principle and get to know our coalescing microfibre filter elements.

Ultrafiltration and nanofiltration differ from microfiltration only in terms of their degree of separation. In ultrafiltration, the degree of separation is 0.002 to 0.1µm whereas in nanofiltration, the degree of separation is below 0.002µm.