Determination of the Fouling and Rejection Mechanisms for the Removal of Carbamazepine, Naproxen and Sulfamethoxazole by Clean and Fouled Nanomembranes
Date Issued
2011
Date
2011
Author(s)
Chou, Wen-Hung
Abstract
In this study, three target compounds were used to evaluate the performance of a nanofilter in removing these compounds and to determine the removal mechanisms in the filtration experiment. Nanofiltration membrane was tested under cross-flow module in this research. The concentrations of effluent and membrane properties were characterized using HPLC, SEM, and AFM.
This research investigated the effects of solute and membrane characteristics on the rejection and flux decline at various pH values and foulants. The rejection mechanisms of nanofiltration include size exclusion, electrostatic exclusion and adsorption. The fouling membrane was induced by adding the humic acid and calcium to act as natural organic matter and ion to foul the membrane. The filtration processes of the three compounds all have high rejection by the nanofiltration. But in the fouling membrane filtration process, the rejection efficiency of the fouled membrane was not as good as that of the clean membrane.
Standard blocking was not the main fouling mechanism for the membranes, which indicated that the molecular size of foulant in the feed solution might larger than that of the membrane pore. Membrane fouling could be brought by the different fouling mechanisms, i.e., pore blocking and cake layer formation.
Results from this study revealed that the adsorption capacity of the target compounds ranged from 0.02 to 0.33 μg/cm2. The clean membrane showed a better adsorption capacity than the fouling membrane. The adsorption mechanisms of the nanofiltration process were investigated in this study. The estimated adsorption capacity of the study disagreed with those reported in the literature due in part to the different methods used in conducting the adsorption experiments.
The adsorption experiments this study were conducted in batch, whereas other researchers studied the adsorption during filtration runs.
The procedure to discuss the rejection and fouling mechanism was studied. In this study develop a procedure including integrating the experimental data and predicted model. The procedure develops a different way to predict the pore size of the clean and the fouled membrane by the experimental design and the model.
Subjects
Nanofiltration
Pharmaceutical
Retention Mechanism
Adsorption
Type
thesis
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