High-selectivity membrane absorption process for recovery of ammonia with electrospun hollow fiber membrane

Abstract

Excessive ammonia nitrogen in wastewater seriously endangers ecological environment, so high-flux and selectivity membrane is urgently needed for ammonia removal using membrane absorption (MA). In this paper, a high-performance electrospun hollow fiber membrane was fabricated and solvent vapor welding treatment was adopted to enhance mechanical strength. The post-treatment membrane showed 103.8% higher in the Young’s modulus than the pristine membrane. High mechanical strength, porosity and hydrophobicity of the membrane make it superior in mass transfer and selectivity. The effects of membrane thickness, pH and temperature of feed solution on experimental overall mass transfer coefficient (KOE) and selectivity coefficient (SNH3/H2O (g)) were intensively investigated to examine the membrane performance in MA application. The results show KOE is 1.35 * 10−5 m s−1 and SNH3/H2O (g) is 7.58 when pH is 11, which are higher than that of commercial membrane. Moreover, the selectivity can be improved greatly from 6.91 to 9.74 by increasing the thickness of the hollow fiber membrane from 55 ± 5 μm to 115 ± 5 μm. The welded electrospun hollow fiber membrane demonstrates great potential for ammonia removal in MA application.