Elucidating the fouling mechanism in pharmaceutical wastewater treatment by membrane distillation
Type
ArticleKAUST Department
Water Desalination and Reuse Research Center (WDRC)Date
2019-11-09Online Publication Date
2019-11-09Print Publication Date
2020-02Embargo End Date
2021-11-09Permanent link to this record
http://hdl.handle.net/10754/660382
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Show full item recordAbstract
This study investigated the fouling mechanism in pharmaceutical wastewater treatment by membrane distillation, with a focus on the interfacial electrokinetic effect between the membrane and foulants as well as the surface hydrophobicity effect, and an advanced in-situ optical coherence tomography (OCT) technology. Three antibiotics with different surface charges were used as feed solutions, consisting of cefotaxime (CTX, negatively charged), tobramycin (TOB, positively charged) and ciprofloxacin (CFX, neutral) for studying the interfacial electrokinetic effect. In order to study the influence of membrane hydrophobicity on the fouling process, two commercial membranes with different hydrophobicity were employed; commercial polyvinylidene fluoride (C-PVDF) and commercial polytetrafluoroethylene (C-PTFE). Additionally, we also fabricated a fouling resistant polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) membrane coated with perfluorooctyltriethoxysilane (FTES)-TiO2 nanoparticles to engineer the surface charge and energy, and to achieve a superhydrophobic surface. After the MD operation, OCT scans detected no visible foulant layer on the three negatively charged membranes when treating negatively charged CTX. On the other hand, in the case of positively charged TOB, the rejection efficiency was only 78% due to its accumulation behavior on the C-PVDF membrane surface, with a thick foulant layer (326–408 μm) and blockage of pores, while the TiO2-PVDF membrane exhibited a stable performance.Citation
Guo, J., Fortunato, L., Deka, B. J., Jeong, S., & An, A. K. (2020). Elucidating the fouling mechanism in pharmaceutical wastewater treatment by membrane distillation. Desalination, 475, 114148. doi:10.1016/j.desal.2019.114148Sponsors
This work was supported by the Research Grant Council of Hong Kong through Project 21201316 and 11207717, and the Basic Science Research Program Fund through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NFR) funded by the Ministry of Education (2017R1A6A3A04004335). The authors declare no competing financial interests.Publisher
Elsevier BVJournal
DesalinationAdditional Links
https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S001191641930699Xae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.1016/j.desal.2019.114148