Effective recovery of acids from egg waste incorporated PSf membranes: A step towards sustainable development

Abstract

A required progress in developing effective membranes for diffusion dialysis provides a platform to explore novel hybrid membranes for acid recovery. This novel study investigated a feasibility of egg shell membrane powder in enhancing proton permeability of polysulfone membrane, thereby promoting a sustainable development in acid recovery. Hybrid membranes with different concentration loading of egg shell membrane to polysulfone were fabricated, characterized and analyzed in terms of water uptake, ion exchange capacity, chemical stability, thermal stability and mechanical stability and the viability towards effective acid recovery. Results revealed that, prepared EP membranes showed almost 5.55 folds greater proton permeability and very high separation factor than most commercially available DF- 120 membrane. Enhancement in performance and acid recovery in the whole work is credited to presence of amino acids groups in egg shell membrane with enormous amount of hydrogen bond donar and acceptor sites which helps in hydrogen bond formation, and occurrence of π- π interactions with polysulfone forming channels to effectively permeate hydrogen ions. Also, these structural interactions remarkably increased the membrane stiffness compared to pristine PSf membrane and showed better mechanical stability. The strategy behind this work is promising for developing high performance, sustainable product for rapid acid recovery which could be examined in detail to apply for industrial spent acid recovery.