A novel approach to evaporate brine wastewater using a ceramic aeration membrane was proposed. A high-porosity ceramic membrane was selected as the aeration membrane and was modified with hydrophobic modifiers to avoid undesired surface wetting. The water contact angle of the ceramic aeration membrane reached 130° after hydrophobic modification. The hydrophobic ceramic aeration membrane showed excellent operational stability (up to 100 h), high salinity (25 wt.%) tolerance, and excellent regeneration performance. The evaporative rate reached 98 kg m-2 h-1, which could be restored by ultrasonic cleaning after the membrane fouling occurred. Furthermore, this novel approach shows great promise for practical applications toward a low cost of only 66 kW·h·m-3.
Keywords: aeration evaporation; brine wastewater; high-porosity ceramic membrane; hydrophobic modification.