Enhanced performance of porous forward osmosis (FO) membrane in the treatment of oily wastewater containing HPAM by the incorporation of palygorskite

Qianwen Zhang; Wande Ding; Huanzhen Zhang; Kefeng Zhang; Zhili Wang; Jiayu Liu

doi:10.1039/d1ra02858h

Enhanced performance of porous forward osmosis (FO) membrane in the treatment of oily wastewater containing HPAM by the incorporation of palygorskite

RSC Adv. 2021 Jun 24;11(36):22439-22449. doi: 10.1039/d1ra02858h. eCollection 2021 Jun 21.

Authors

Qianwen Zhang¹, Wande Ding^{2

3}, Huanzhen Zhang¹, Kefeng Zhang², Zhili Wang¹, Jiayu Liu¹

Affiliations

¹ School of Water Resources & Environment, China University of Geosciences Beijing 100083 China dingwande18@sdjzu.edu.cn huanzhen@cugb.edu.cn.
² School of Municipal and Environmental Engineering, Shandong Jianzhu University Jinan 250101 China.
³ Shandong Shuifa Environmental Technology Co., Ltd Jining 272000 China.

Abstract

Since the emergence of forward osmosis (FO), low energy requirements, low fouling propensity and high-water recovery have made it one of the most promising water purification technologies. However, there have been few reports focusing on the treatment of polymer flooding produced water (PFPW) using FO technology up to now. In the present work, porous FO membranes with/without palygorskite (Pal) nanoparticles were utilized as the separation membrane to evaluate the potential of a porous FO membrane in the treatment of oily wastewater containing HPAM and the effect of Pal nanoparticles on the FO performance was investigated. When the loading concentration of Pal in the membrane was 0.75 wt%, the water flux could reach 37.67 L m^-2 h^-1 by using 4 g L^-1 poly(sodium-p-styrenesulfonate) (PSS) as draw solution under a cross-flow rate of 18.5 cm s^-1, which was much higher than that for pure polysulfone (PS) membranes. Besides, the comparison between ultrafiltration (UF) and FO performance in treating HPAM solution indicated that FO possessed better antifouling capacity, since less decline and higher recovery of water flux were observed during the FO process. Furthermore, recycling the draw solution gave an almost unchanged water flux, which suggested the feasibility of draw solute regeneration in the FO process. This work broadens the application field of porous FO technology and may pave a new way in the treatment of PFPW.