Graphene Oxide Membranes for Trace Hydrocarbon Contaminant Removal from Aqueous Solution.

Alessandro Pedico,Monica Periolatto,Seifeddine Kara,Stefano Carminati,Elena Tresso,Stefano Bianco,Candido Fabrizio Pirri,Andrea Lamberti,Marco Fontana

doi:10.3390/nano10112242

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to shed light on the application of graphene oxide (GO) membranes for the selective removal of benzene, toluene, and xylene (BTX) from wastewater. These molecules are present in traces in the water produced from oil and gas plants and are treated now with complex filtration systems. GO membranes are obtained by a simple, fast, and scalable method. The focus of this work is to prove the possibility of employing GO membranes for the filtration of organic contaminants present in traces in oil and gas wastewater, which has never been reported. The stability of GO membranes is analyzed in water solutions with different pH and salinity. Details of the membrane preparation are provided, resulting in a crucial step to achieve a good filtration performance. Material characterization techniques such as electron microscopy, x-ray diffraction, and infrared spectroscopy are employed to study the physical and chemical structure of GO membranes, while gas chromatography, UV-visible spectroscopy, and gravimetric techniques allow the quantification of their filtration performance. An impressive rejection of about 90% was achieved for 1 ppm of toluene and other pollutants in water, demonstrating the excellent performance of GO membranes in the oil and gas field.

Highlights

Graphene-based materials, including single-layer graphene and derivatives such as graphene oxide (GO), have received growing attention from the scientific community in the past few years [1]
This study provides experimental proof of the possibility of using GO membranes as NF membranes for the removal of BTX contaminants present in water below their solubility limit
The filtration results are promising, showing a rejection higher than 80% for a concentration of toluene around 100 ppm, and a rejection above 90% for lower concentrations corresponding to 1 ppm or below

Summary

Introduction

Graphene-based materials, including single-layer graphene and derivatives such as graphene oxide (GO), have received growing attention from the scientific community in the past few years [1]. Many studies can be found in the literature about graphene-based membranes applied for water purification, such as single-layer graphene with controlled pores This technology, initially theorized [2] and experimentally realized [3] for water desalination, is so far under development because of the great effort required to achieve controlled filtration properties together with scalable and low-cost preparation techniques [4]. Based on the findings from numerical simulations [6,7,8], many experimental studies have been reported in the literature, showing the possibility of tuning GO’s properties to achieve good filtration results [9,10,11] In this context, GO membranes find application for their natural

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