Juxtaposition of polyethersulfone (PES) composite membrane: performance and antifouling capability
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Date
2019-06
Authors
Liau, Xin Jie
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Abstract
The treatment of oily wastewater has become a worldwide challenge since large amount of oily wastewater produced everyday by industrial process and daily life usage. Thus, membrane technology is one of the effective advanced method for oily wastewater treatment. The materials used in production of membrane are important and vary depending on the application of membrane. Polyethersulfone (PES) is one of the applicable membrane materials for oily wastewater treatment due to its superior characteristics such as high mechanical, thermal and chemical resistance that is favourable for microfiltration (MF) and ultrafiltration (UF) applications. Unfortunately, PES membrane possesses hydrophobic characteristic which have potential susceptible to fouling during filtration. Membrane modification including surface coating and blending method had been introduced in order to mitigate fouling and increase hydrophilicity for higher permeate flux. In this current work, inorganic nanoparticles including titanium oxide (TiO2), silicon dioxide (SiO2) and zinc oxide (ZnO) were blended to form mixed matrix membrane (MMMs) via non-solvent induced phase separation (NIPS) method in the presence of polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) and methyl-2-pyrrolidone (NMP) as the solvent. Varies parameter studied include addition of one type of nanoparticle and also addition of combination of various nanoparticles types in the respective membrane. The main objectives of this work is to study the effects of nanoparticles on physical properties of membrane and separation performance of oil water emulsion. Fabricated membrane were characterized by SEM, EDX, TGA, viscosity, FTIR, contact angle measurement and porosity. The results showed adding one types of nanoparticles was better than adding combination nanoparticles in term of high hydrophilicity, low agglomeration and ultrafiltration performance of oil water emulsion. Among the 3 membranes with addition of TiO2, SiO2, and ZnO respectively, membrane incorporated with TiO2 displayed the highest pure water flux of 21.68 kg/m2.h and permeate flux of 7.95 kg/m2.h among all the fabricated membranes. This membrane had the highest hydrophilicity with contact angle value of 36.78+0.04o. Finger-like structure and well dispersion of TiO2 were observed under SEM. In addition, this membrane also presented the lowest fouling phenomenon among all the membranes with FRR and RFR of 48.57 % and 63.33 % respectively.