Steroid hormone micropollutant removal from water with activated carbon fiber-ultrafiltration composite membranes

Jinju Zhang; Minh Nhat Nguyen; Yanxiang Li; Chuanfang Yang; Andrea Iris Schäfer

doi:10.1016/j.jhazmat.2020.122020

Steroid hormone micropollutant removal from water with activated carbon fiber-ultrafiltration composite membranes

J Hazard Mater. 2020 Jun 5:391:122020. doi: 10.1016/j.jhazmat.2020.122020. Epub 2020 Jan 3.

Authors

Jinju Zhang¹, Minh Nhat Nguyen², Yanxiang Li³, Chuanfang Yang⁴, Andrea Iris Schäfer⁵

Affiliations

¹ CAS Key Laboratory of Green Process and Engineering, Institute of Process Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China; University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China; Membrane Technology Department, Institute of Functional Interfaces (IFG-MT), Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Hermann-von-Helmholtz-Platz 1, 76344, Eggenstein-Leopoldshafen, Germany.
² Membrane Technology Department, Institute of Functional Interfaces (IFG-MT), Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Hermann-von-Helmholtz-Platz 1, 76344, Eggenstein-Leopoldshafen, Germany.
³ CAS Key Laboratory of Green Process and Engineering, Institute of Process Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China.
⁴ CAS Key Laboratory of Green Process and Engineering, Institute of Process Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China. Electronic address: chuanfang_y@yahoo.com.
⁵ Membrane Technology Department, Institute of Functional Interfaces (IFG-MT), Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Hermann-von-Helmholtz-Platz 1, 76344, Eggenstein-Leopoldshafen, Germany. Electronic address: andrea.iris.schaefer@kit.edu.

PMID: 32058226
DOI: 10.1016/j.jhazmat.2020.122020

Abstract

Short activated carbon fibers (ACF) with high surface area were fabricated via carbonization in N₂ and activation in CO₂ at high temperatures, with cellulose fibers as the raw materials. The obtained ACF were subsequently deposited into the support layer of a polyethersulfone (PES) ultrafiltration membrane by a facile filtration process to obtain the sandwich structured ACF-PES composite membrane. The hormone (17β-estradiol, E2) adsorption kinetics and isotherm of ACF in static conditions, as well as E2 removal by filtration with the ACF-PES composite membrane were investigated. In static conditions, ACF rapidly and efficiently adsorbs E2 evidenced by a high removal of >97 %. The fitting of second order kinetics and linear (Henry) adsorption isotherm models indicated the availability of easily accessible adsorption sites. Besides, such efficient E2 adsorption was contributed by many interactions between E2 and ACF, namely hydrophobic interactions, hydrogen bonding and π-π stacking. The incorporation of ACF in a PES membrane resulted in a minor loss of filtration flux compared with the control membrane, but significantly improved E2 removal through adsorption pathway. With only 1.0 mg ACF incorporated (loading 2.0 g/m²), the composite membrane could reject 76 % of E2 from a 100 ng/L solution at a flux of 450 L/m²∙h, demonstrating that ACF-PES can overcome the permeability-selectivity trade-off of traditional UF membranes.

Keywords: Activated carbon fiber; Adsorption mechanism; Composite membrane; Estradiol (E2); Ultrafiltration; Water treatment.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't