Low pressure operated ultrafiltration membrane with integration of hollow mesoporous carbon nanospheres for effective removal of micropollutants

Zhipeng Liao; Minh Nhat Nguyen; Gaojie Wan; Jia Xie; Linhan Ni; Junwen Qi; Jiansheng Li; Andrea Iris Schäfer

doi:10.1016/j.jhazmat.2020.122779

Low pressure operated ultrafiltration membrane with integration of hollow mesoporous carbon nanospheres for effective removal of micropollutants

J Hazard Mater. 2020 Oct 5:397:122779. doi: 10.1016/j.jhazmat.2020.122779. Epub 2020 Apr 21.

Authors

Zhipeng Liao¹, Minh Nhat Nguyen², Gaojie Wan¹, Jia Xie¹, Linhan Ni¹, Junwen Qi¹, Jiansheng Li³, Andrea Iris Schäfer²

Affiliations

¹ Key Laboratory of New Membrane Materials, Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, School of Environmental and Biological Engineering, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing 210094, China.
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 Key Laboratory of New Membrane Materials, Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, School of Environmental and Biological Engineering, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing 210094, China. Electronic address: lijsh@njust.edu.cn.

PMID: 32387831
DOI: 10.1016/j.jhazmat.2020.122779

Abstract

An effective way to remove micropollutants is desirable for water purification. In this work, a dual-functional ultrafiltration (DFUF) membrane was fabricated by loading hollow mesoporous carbon nanospheres (HMCNs) into the finger-like support layer pores of the polymeric ultrafiltration (UF) membrane. The designed DFUF membrane combines the high selectivity of ultrafiltration that removes macromolecules based on size exclusion mechanism, and excellent adsorption capacity of HMCNs towards micropollutants in water. When tetracycline (TCN) and 17β-Estradiol (E2) were selected as model micropollutants, corresponding 97 % and 94 % removal were achieved at a low pressure less than 0.15 bar and a flux of 50 and 64 L h^-1 m^-2 (estimated residence time less than 6 s), respectively. Moreover, simultaneous removal of multiple pollutants was demonstrated by filtering a mixture containing TCN and polyethylene glycols (PEG) 600 kDa macromolecules. Over a long filtration period (more than 60 h) that produced 3180 L/m² of permeate, the TCN concentration reduced from 100 μg/L in the feed to less than 10 μg/L in the permeate. The above results indicate that the DFUF membrane is capable of removing the small molecular and macromolecular pollutants simultaneously at low pressure, and hence offers remarkable potential in water treatment applications.

Keywords: Dual-function ultrafiltration membrane; Estradiol; Micropollutants; Steroid hormones; Tetracycline.

Publication types

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