Open AccessThe Separation of Oily Water Mixture Using Membrane
Author(s) -
Nur Syazwanie Izzati Chik,
Norin Zamiah Kassim Shaari,
Siti Aisyah Shamsudin
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
iop conference series. materials science and engineering
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1757-899X
pISSN - 1757-8981
DOI - 10.1088/1757-899x/1176/1/012003
Subject(s) - membrane , polysulfone , vinyl alcohol , chemical engineering , polymer , materials science , polyethylene glycol , fouling , contact angle , membrane fouling , chromatography , chemistry , composite material , biochemistry , engineering
The increment of oil discharge in the water system gives a great impact to the environments. Membrane separation has been widely used to treat the oily water mixture due to its environmentally process, low operating cost and has better efficiency. Polysulfone (PSF) is widely used in the membrane fabrication due to its good physico-chemical, mechanical and hydraulic stability, but its hydrophobicity limits its application in the separation of oily mixture due to the fouling. The blend of PSF with poly (vinyl alcohol) (PVA) could compensate this limitation where the covalent bonding between PSF/PVA could form a protective layer to prevent the deposition of organic foulants on the membrane surface. Furthermore, PVA has been studied intensively for membrane applications because of its good chemical stability, film-forming ability and high hydrophilicity. To ensure the compatibility and high stability of the resultant membrane, the cross linking of the polymer blend (PSF/PVA) with tetraethylorthosilicate as silica nano precursor through sol-gel reaction was conducted in this study. Polyethylene glycol 400 was added as an additive to improve the properties of the integral membrane. The concentration of tetraethylorthosilicate was varied at 0wt.%, 0.5wt.%, and 1wt.% while the concentrations of other polymers are remained constant. Performance testing on the fabricated membrane through pure water flux and rejection of oil particles were conducted. The results exhibited that higher concentration of tetraethylorthosilicate led to higher water flux and higher rejection of oil particles respectively for the fabricated membrane. The crosslinked membranes achieved l00% of oil rejection after 45 minutes filtration time, meanwhile membrane from pure polymer blend only achieved 60.2% of oil rejection. This finding shows the potential of the fabricated membrane to be further explored in the area of oily water mixture treatment process.