Abstract
The increasing rate of oil and gas production has contributed to a release of oil/water emulsion or mixtures to the environment, becoming a pressing issue. At the same time, pollution of the toxic cigarette butt has also become a growing concern. This study explored utilization of cigarette butt waste as a source of cellulose acetate-based (CA) polymer to develop a phase inverted membrane for treatment of oil/water emulsion and compare it with commercial polyvinylidene difluoride (PVDF) and polysulfone (PSF). Results show that the CA-based membrane from waste cigarette butt offers an eco-friendly material without compromising the separation efficiency, with a pore size range suitable for oil/water emulsion filtration with the rejection of >94.0%. The CA membrane poses good structural property similar to the established PVDF and PSF membranes with equally asymmetric morphology. It also poses hydrophilicity properties with a contact angle of 74.5°, lower than both PVDF and PSF membranes. The pore size of CA demonstrates that the CA is within the microfiltration range with a mean flow pore size of 0.17 µm. The developed CA membrane shows a promising oil/water emulsion permeability of 180 L m−2 h−1 bar−1 after five filtration cycles. However, it still suffers a high degree of irreversible fouling (>90.0%), suggesting potential future improvements in terms of membrane fouling management. Overall, this study demonstrates a sustainable approach to addressing oil/water emulsion pollution treated CA membrane from cigarette butt waste.
Highlights
Trillions of cigarette butts are hazardous material deposited annually in the environment [1], and they have been identified as the most littered item worldwide [2]
The finding on the microstructure suggests the potential of a waste cigarette butt for membrane fabrication, which can be applied for oil/water emulsion Polymers 2021, 13, x FOR PEER REVIEfiWltration
This study unravels the potential of cellulose acetate-based (CA) from cigarette butt waste as material for membrane fabrication for the oil/water emulsion treatment
Summary
Trillions of cigarette butts are hazardous material deposited annually in the environment [1], and they have been identified as the most littered item worldwide [2]. During the year 2016, 5.7 trillion cigarettes were consumed worldwide, and about 97% of the cigarette filters were composed of cellulose acetate, a modified natural polymer [3]. This figure is expected to increase by 1.6 times in 2025 [4]. Several studies on converting the waste cigarette butts into usable products were made in various fields, mainly in environmental engineering, buildings and infrastructures, energy storage devices, insecticide, and metallurgical industry [5,6]. The analysis of the potential recycling cigarette butt waste in environmental engineering applications corresponds to about 14.0% of all the possible applications [5]. The utilizations of cigarette butt waste have been mostly focused on buildings and structure applications
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