Treatment to surfactant containing wastewater with membrane distillation membrane with novel sandwich structure

Hanyu Guo; Haifu Gao; An Yan; Xiaolong Lu; Chunrui Wu; Li Gao; Jianhua Zhang

doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.161195

Treatment to surfactant containing wastewater with membrane distillation membrane with novel sandwich structure

Sci Total Environ. 2023 Apr 1:867:161195. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.161195. Epub 2022 Dec 26.

Authors

Hanyu Guo¹, Haifu Gao¹, An Yan¹, Xiaolong Lu¹, Chunrui Wu², Li Gao³, Jianhua Zhang⁴

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Separation Membranes and Membrane Processes, School of Material Science and Engineering, Tiangong University, Tianjin 300387, PR China.
² State Key Laboratory of Separation Membranes and Membrane Processes, School of Material Science and Engineering, Tiangong University, Tianjin 300387, PR China. Electronic address: wuchunrui@tiangong.edu.cn.
³ ISILC, Victoria University, PO Box 14428, Melbourne, Victoria 8001, Australia; South East Water Corporation, PO Box 2268, Seaford, Victoria 3198, Australia.
⁴ ISILC, Victoria University, PO Box 14428, Melbourne, Victoria 8001, Australia. Electronic address: jianhua.zhang@vu.edu.au.

PMID: 36581298
DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.161195

Abstract

Surfactant containing wastewater widely exists in textile industry, which hardly to be treated by membrane technology due to its high in salinity and wetting potential. In this study, PVDF membrane was modified by constructing a PDMS-SiO₂-PDMS "sandwich" structure on top of its surface via coating to achieve resistance to surfactant induced wetting. The "sandwich" layer was optimized based on the membrane performance during membrane distillation. Compared to the pristine PVDF membrane with contact angle of 92°, the water contact angle of the membrane with a "sandwich" layer of 0.44 μm increased to 153°. For the feed contained 0.5 wt% NaCl and 0.25 wt% surfactant, there was no membrane wetting occurred during the experiment period using the membrane with a "sandwich" structure, in comparison to the pristine PVDF membrane being wetted from beginning. For a challenge experiment to the developed membrane lasting for 100 h using a surfactant containing feed, there is no wetting sign observed and the stable flux is 20 kg·m^-2·h^-1.

Keywords: Anti-wetting; Hollow fiber membrane; Membrane distillation; Poly(vinylidene fluoride) membrane; Surface coating.