Dairy industry wastewater treatment by MOF and 2D nanomaterial engineered PVDF membranes based aerobic MBR: Membrane fouling mitigation and stability study

Abstract

In the present research work, PVDF membranes are embedded using zinc imidazolate framework-8 and molybdenum disulfide. The membrane's impact is investigated using their permeability, separation performance, reusability and stability performance and fouling resistance. Results show that the ZIF-8 and MoS2 based PVDF nanocomposite membranes have superior pure water flux performance, such as 27.71 L/m2 h and 32.53 L/m2 h, respectively. The FRR of the ZIF-8 and MoS2-based PVDF nanocomposite membranes is obtained at 95.65 % and 97.04 %, respectively. The flux recovery ratio and water contact angle studies show that prepared membranes have better antifouling performance than pristine PVDF membranes. The pollutant removal performance for COD, BOD5, TN, NH4-N and TP is obtained as 94.08 %, 95.31 %, 94.5 %, 95.56 % and 94.64 %, respectively, from dairy industry wastewater. Also, the microbial culture growth study report that the ZIF-8 and MoS2 based PVDF membranes reject maximum microbes from the treated water. Therefore, the prepared PVDF nanocomposite membranes show outstanding filtration performance, reusability, and long-term stability performance. Hence, the ZIF-8 and MoS2 nanomaterials significantly improved the PVDF membrane's characteristics and could be a promising nanocomposite membrane for practical application in different wastewater treatments.