• Membrane and Water Treatment
• /
• v.6 no.3
• /
• pp.173-187
• /
• 2015

The goal of present work is the preparation of a novel positively charged nanofiltration (NF) membrane and its development for the cation removal of aqueous solutions. This NF membrane was fabricated by the surface modification of polysulfone (PSf) ultrafiltration support. The active top-layer was formed by interfacial cross-linking polymerization of poly(ethyleneimine) (PEI) with p-xylylene dichloride (XDC) and then quaternized with methyl iodide to form a perpetually positively charged layer. In order to improve the efficiency of nanofiltration membrane, the concentration of PEI, XDC and methyl iodide solutions, PEI coating and cross-linking time have been optimized. As a result, a high water flux and high $CaCl_2$ rejection (1,000 ppm) was obtained for the composite membrane with values of $18.29L/m^2.h$ and 93.62% at 4 bar and $25^{\circ}C$, respectively. The rejections of NF membrane for different salt solutions followed the order of $Na_2SO_4$ < $MgSO_4$ < NaCl < $CaCl_2$. Molecular weight of cut off (MWCO) was calculated via retaining of PEG solutions with different molecular weights that finally, it revealed the Stokes and hydrodynamic radius of 1.457 and 2.507 nm on the membrane selective layer, respectively. The most efficient positively charged nanofiltration membrane exhibited a $Ni^{2+}$ rejection of 96.26% for industrial wastewater from Shamse Hadaf Co. (Kashan, Iran).

• Membrane and Water Treatment
• /
• v.9 no.4
• /
• pp.233-243
• /
• 2018

In this manuscript, $35m^3/d$ NF unit was designed and applied for surface water treatment of the River Nile water. Intake of Embaba drinking water treatment plant was selected to install that unit at since; it has the lowest water quality index value through the examined 6 sites in greater Cairo area. The optimized operating conditions were feed and permeate flow, 40 and $7m^3/d$, feed pressure 2.68 bar and flux rate $37.7l/m^2h$. The permeate water was drinkable according to Egyptian Ministerial decree 458/2007 for the tested parameters (physic-chemical, heavy metals, organic, algal, bacteriological and parasitological). Single and double sand filters were used as pretreatment for NF membranes but continuous clogging for sand filters moved us to use UF membrane as pretreatment for NF membrane.

• Journal of Korean Society on Water Environment
• /
• v.21 no.2
• /
• pp.205-210
• /
• 2005

There has been a growing interest in NF membrane for drinking water treatment, because it can remove simultaneously both hardness and hazardous micro pollutants such as pesticides and THM precursors. In this work, a hollow fiber NF membrane known as a composite membrane was employed for the rejection properties of both hydrophilic solutes and micro organic pollutants, where the former was used to evaluate the molecular sieving effect of this membrane and the latter was employed for the investigation of solute-membrane interaction as hydrophobic materials. This membrane effectively rejected the hydrophilic solutes and the permeation of them was mainly controlled by the molecular sieving effects such as molecular weight and molecular width. In the case of all micro organic pollutants, the rejections were varied from 42.2% for Simazine to 91.6% for Malathion, and the parameters related to the steric hindrance could significantly play an important role in the rejection. In the batch type adsorption experiments, all micro organic pollutants were entrapped mildly on the membrane in spite of lower degree compared with that of aromatic compounds, and they were correlated with log K.

• Membrane and Water Treatment
• /
• v.11 no.5
• /
• pp.323-331
• /
• 2020

With the increasing demand on reverse osmosis (RO) membranes for water purification worldwide, the number of disposed membrane elements is expected to increase accordingly. Thus, recycling and reuse of end-of-life RO membranes should be a global environmental action. In this work, we aim to reuse the spent RO membrane for nanofiltration (NF) and ultrafiltration (UF) process by subjecting the spent membrane to solvent and oxidizing solution treatment, respectively. Our results showed that solvent-treated RO membrane could perform as good as commercial NF membrane by achieving similar separation efficiencies, but with reduced water permeability due to membrane surface fouling. By degrading the polyamide layer of RO membrane, the transformed membrane could achieve high water permeability (85.6 L/㎡.h.bar) and excellent rejection against macromolecules (at least 87.4%), suggesting its reuse potential as UF membrane. More importantly, our findings showed that in-situ transformation on the spent RO membrane using solvent and oxidizing solution could be safely conducted as the properties of the entire spiral wound element did not show significant changes upon prolonged exposure of these two solutions. Our findings are important to open up new possibilities for the discarded RO membranes for reuse in NF and UF process, prolonging the lifespan of spent membranes and promoting the sustainability of the membrane process.

• Membrane and Water Treatment
• /
• v.7 no.3
• /
• pp.193-207
• /
• 2016

Boron is one of the most problematic inorganic pollutants and is difficult to remove in water. Strict standards have been imposed for boron content in water because of their high toxicity at high concentrations. Technologies using membrane processes such as reverse osmosis (RO) and nanofiltration (NF) have increasingly been employed in many industrial sectors. In this work, removal of boron from model water solutions was investigated using polyamide reverse osmosis and nanofiltration membranes. RO-AG, RO-SG, NF-90 and NF-HL membranes were used to reduce the boron from model water at different operational conditions. To understand the boron separation properties a characterization of the four membranes was performed by determining the pure water permeability, surface charge and molecular weight cut-off. Thereafter, the effect of feed pressure, concentration, ionic strength, nature of ions in solution and pH on the rejection of boron were studied. The rejection of boron can reach up to 90% for the three membranes AG, SG and NF-90 at pH = 11. The Spiegler-Kedem model was applied to experimental results to determine the reflection coefficient of the membrane ${\sigma}$ and the solute permeability $P_s$.

• Membrane and Water Treatment
• /
• v.5 no.3
• /
• pp.171-182
• /
• 2014

Organic compounds are adsorbed on RO/NF membranes, and the adsorption may influence the rejection of organic compounds by the membranes. Because almost RO/NF membranes are composite membranes, the results obtained by adsorption experiment with using membrane pieces are unable to avoid the influence by the support membrane. In this work, the interaction between membrane polymer and organic solutes was examined by an inverse HPLC methodology. Poly (m-phenylenetrimesoylate), the constituent of skin layer of RO/NF membranes, was coated on silica gel particles and used as a stationary phase for HPLC. When water was used as a mobile phase, almost hydrophilic aliphatic compounds were not effectively adsorbed on the stationary phase, although hydrophobic compounds were slightly adsorbed. The results indicated that the hydrophilic aliphatic compounds are useful probe solutes to examine the molecular sieving effect of a membrane. When water was used as a mobile phase, the aromatic compounds were strongly retained, and therefore $CH_3CN/H_2O$ (30/70) was used as a mobile phase. It was revealed that the adsorption of aromatic compounds was controlled by stacking between solute and polymer and was hindered by non-planar structure and substituents.

• Proceedings of the Membrane Society of Korea Conference
• /
• 2004.05a
• /
• pp.25-28
• /
• 2004

In recent years, membranes have become fully or partially integrated into all facilities that produce drinking water since membrane processes can resolve technically complex and, at times, conflicting requirements related to compliance with multi-contaminant regulations. However, NF or RO technologies are hydraulically limited by the feed water quality that causes the fouling in a membrane system. In particular, NF or RO systems involved in surface water treatment generally require extensive pretreatment for controlling membrane fouling.(omitted)

• Proceedings of the Membrane Society of Korea Conference
• /
• 2003.05a
• /
• pp.101-105
• /
• 2003

• Proceedings of the Membrane Society of Korea Conference
• /
• 2002.11a
• /
• pp.170-173
• /
• 2002

• Membrane and Water Treatment
• /
• v.7 no.6
• /
• pp.477-493
• /
• 2016

Immediate use of activated carbon incorporated polysulfone membrane application for dye separation was reported in this work. Dimethylformamide (DMF) was used as the solvent for the membrane preparation. The membrane thus prepared were characterized in terms of surface morphology, ATR-FTIR, AFM, experimental results as membrane performance. The resultant nanofiltration (NF) membranes were tested with Congo red dye concentration 200 mg/L. The water permeability was found to be considerably higher than that reported in literature. Experimental results show that the real rejection of the Congo red is 99.57% over the transmembrane pressure 100 psi using 30% activated carbon incorporated membrane. Prepared NF membranes shows the corresponding permeates fluxes were $40Lm^{-2}h^{-1}$ to $82Lm^{-2}h^{-1}$ with different activated carbon percentage incorporated in polysulfone membrane. The present study demonstrated that dye rejection enhanced NF may be a feasible method for the dye wastewater treatment. The overall observations thus indicated that toxic residual dyes can be appreciably separated from the membrane technology, provided that the accompanying polymeric membrane, activated carbon as binding agents and the process parameter levels are astutely selected.