Removal of micropollutants from water by nanocomposite membrane adsorbers

Enhanced EDC removal from water through electron beam-mediated adsorber particle integration in microfiltration membranes

The existence of endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) in water and wastewater gives rise to significant environmental concerns. Conventional treatment approaches demonstrate limited capacity for EDC removal. Thus, incorporation of advanced separation procedures becomes essential to enhance the efficiency of EDC removal. In this work, adsorber composite microfiltration polyethersulfone membranes embedded with divinyl benzene polymer particles were created. These membranes were designed for effectively removing a variety of EDCs from water. The adsorber particles were synthesized using precipitation polymerization. Subsequently, they were integrated into the membrane scaffold through a phase inversion process. The technique of electron beam irradiation was applied for the covalent immobilization of particles within the membrane scaffold. Standard characterization procedures were carried out (i.e., water permeance, contact angle, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and scanning electron microscopy) to gain a deep understanding of the synthesized membrane properties. Dynamic adsorption experiments demonstrated the excellent capability of the synthesized composite membranes to effectively remove EDCs from water. Particularly, among the various target molecules examined, testosterone stands out with the most remarkable enhancement, presenting an adsorption loading of 220 mg m-2. This is an impressive 26-fold increase in the adsorption when compared to the performance of the pristine membrane. Similarly, androst-4-ene-3,17-dione exhibited an 18-fold improvement in adsorption capacity in comparison to the pristine membrane. The composite membranes also exhibited significant adsorption capacities for other key compounds, including 17β-estradiol, equilin, and bisphenol-A. With the implementation of an effective regeneration procedure, the composite membranes were put to use for adsorption over three consecutive cycles without any decline in their adsorption capacity.

Next-generation graphene oxide additives composite membranes for emerging organic micropollutants removal: Separation, adsorption and degradation

In the past two decades, membrane technology has attracted considerable interest as a viable and promising method for water purification. Emerging organic micropollutants (EOMPs) in wastewater have trace, persistent, highly variable quantities and types, develop hazardous intermediates and are diffusible. These primary issues affect EOMPs polluted wastewater on an industrial scale differently than in a lab, challenging membranes-based EOMP removal. Graphene oxide (GO) promises state-of-the-art membrane synthesis technologies and use in EOMPs removal systems due to its superior physicochemical, mechanical, and electrical qualities and high oxygen content. This critical review highlights the recent advancements in the synthesis of next-generation GO membranes with diverse membrane substrates such as ceramic, polyethersulfone (PES), and polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF). The EOMPs removal efficiencies of GO membranes in filtration, adsorption (incorporated with metal, nanomaterial in biodegradable polymer and biomimetic membranes), and degradation (in catalytic, photo-Fenton, photocatalytic and electrocatalytic membranes) and corresponding removal mechanisms of different EOMPs are also depicted. GO-assisted water treatment strategies were further assessed by various influencing factors, including applied water flow mode and membrane properties (e.g., permeability, hydrophily, mechanical stability, and fouling). GO additive membranes showed better permeability, hydrophilicity, high water flux, and fouling resistance than pristine membranes. Likewise, degradation combined with filtration is two times more effective than alone, while crossflow mode improves the photocatalytic degradation performance of the system. GO integration in polymer membranes enhances their stability, facilitates photocatalytic processes, and gravity-driven GO membranes enable filtration of pollutants at low pressure, making membrane filtration more inexpensive. However, simultaneous removal of multiple contaminants with contrasting characteristics and variable efficiencies in different systems demands further optimization in GO-mediated membranes. This review concludes with identifying future critical research directions to promote research for determining the GO-assisted OMPs removal membrane technology nexus and maximizing this technique for industrial application.

Ganzoury M, Zhang N, de Lannoy CF. Nanocomposite Polymeric Membranes for Organic Micropollutant Removal: A Critical Review

The prevalence of organic micropollutants (OMPs) and their persistence in water supplies have raised serious concerns for drinking water safety and public health. Conventional water treatment technologies, including adsorption and biological treatment, are known to be insufficient in treating OMPs and have demonstrated poor selectivity toward a wide range of OMPs. Pressure-driven membrane filtration has the potential to remove many OMPs detected in water with high selectivity as a membrane's molecular weight cutoff (MWCO), surface charge, and hydrophilicity can be easily tailored to a targeted OMP's size, charge and octanol-water partition coefficient (Kow). Over the past 10 years, polymeric (nano)composite microfiltration (MF), ultrafiltration (UF), and nanofiltration (NF) membranes have been extensively synthesized and studied for their ability to remove OMPs. This review discusses the fate and transport of emerging OMPs in water, an assessment of conventional membrane-based technologies (NF, reverse osmosis (RO), forward osmosis (FO), membrane distillation (MD) and UF membrane-based hybrid processes) for their removal, and a comparison to the state-of-the-art nanoenabled membranes with enhanced selectivity toward specific OMPs in water. Nanoenabled membranes for OMP treatment are further discussed with respect to their permeabilities, enhanced properties, limitations, and future improvements.

Removal of steroid micropollutants by polymer-based spherical activated carbon (PBSAC) assisted membrane filtration

Effective micropollutant removal requires energy intensive advanced treatment processes. A novel hybrid membrane configuration - consisting of both ultrafiltration (UF) and nanofiltration (NF) - with permeate-side polymer-based activated carbon (PBSAC) was developed and investigated for the removal of natural hormones with a particular focus on estradiol (E2). The UF-PBSAC process offers significantly enhanced water permeability and hence energy efficiency, while NF-PBSAC was anticipated to reduce residual micropollutant concentration. Realistic micropollutant concentration in the feed (100 ngL^-1) can be reduced to 20-40 ngL^-1 via adsorption in a thin layer (2.2 mm) of UF-PBSAC at a flux of 120-130 Lm^-2 h^-1. Furthermore, during the filtration of 9 L (membrane area 38 cm²), the micropollutant concentration was constant and no saturation could be achieved. Hormone removal was shown to further increase both at lower pressure (and hence flux) and thicker PBSAC layer (until 11 mm). In both cases, this effect was correlated to the increased contact time between estradiol and the PBSAC adsorbent. NF coupled with a PBSAC layer of 2.2 mm achieved a higher overall removal than the UF-PBSAC due to the intrinsic retention of NF. However, the residual NF permeate concentration was similar with and without PBSAC. Thus, the retention of hormones by NF and the adsorption inside the PBSAC layer were demonstrated to be two dependent processes. Overall, the combination of UF with PBSAC absorbent layers is a promising approach for the efficient removal of micropollutants.

Bioinspired Multifunctional Membrane for Aquatic Micropollutants Removal

Micropollutants present in water have many detrimental effects on the ecosystem. Membrane technology plays an important role in the removal of micropollutants, but there remain significant challenges such as concentration polarization, membrane fouling, and variable permeate quality. The work reported here uses a multifunctional membrane with rejection, adsorption, and catalysis functions to solve these problems. On the basis of mussel-inspired chemistry and biological membrane properties, a multifunctional membrane was prepared by applying "reverse filtration" of a laccase solution and subsequent "dopamine coating" on a nanofiltration (NF) membrane support, which was tested on bisphenol A (BPA) removal. Three NF membranes were chosen for the preparation of the multifunctional membranes on the basis of the membrane properties and enzyme immobilization efficiency. Compared with the pristine membrane, the multifunctional membrane exhibited significant improvement of BPA removal (78.21 ± 1.95%, 84.27 ± 7.30%, and 97.04 ± 0.33% for NT103, NF270, and NF90, respectively), all of which are clearly superior to the conventional Fenton treatment (55.0%) under similar conditions and comparable to soluble laccase coupled with NF270 membrane filtration (89.0%). The improvement would appear to be due to a combination of separation (reducing the enzymatic burden), adsorption (enriching the substrate concentration as well as prolonging the residence time), and lastly, catalysis (oxidizing the pollutants and breaking the "adsorption saturation limits"). Furthermore, the synergistic effect of the polydopamine (PDA) layer on the enzymatic oxidation of BPA was confirmed, which was due to its enhanced adsorption and electron transfer performance. The multifunctional membrane could be reused for at least seven cycles with an acceptable activity loss, demonstrating good potential for removal of micropollutants.