Abstract
Adopting an effective strategy to control fouling is a necessary requirement for all membrane processes used in the water/wastewater treatment industry to operate sustainably. The use of ultraviolet (UV) activated photocatalysis has been shown to be effective in mitigating ceramic membrane fouling by natural organic matter. The widely used configuration in which light is directed through the polluted water to the membrane’s active layer suffers from inefficiencies brought about by light absorption by the pollutants and light shielding by the cake layer. To address these limitations, directing light through the substrate, instead of through polluted water, was studied. A UV conducting membrane was prepared by dip coating TiO2 onto a sintered glass substrate. The substrate could successfully conduct UV from a lamp source, unlike a typical alumina substrate. The prepared membrane was applied in the filtration of a humic acid solution as a model compound to study natural organic matter membrane fouling. Directing UV through the substrate showed only a 1 percentage point decline in the effectiveness of the cleaning method over two cleaning events from 72% to 71%, while directing UV over the photocatalytic layer had a 9 percentage point decline from 84% to 75%. Adapting the UV-through-substrate configuration could be more useful in maintaining membrane functionality during humic acid filtration than the current method being used.
Highlights
Water scarcity affects about two-thirds of the world’s population for at least a month of every year [1]
The prepared membrane was applied in the filtration of a humic acid solution as a model compound to study natural organic matter membrane fouling
Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) analysis was used to explore surface functional groups and was performed with a Perkin Elmer Frontier FTIR Spectrometer equipped with an attenuated total reflectance (ATR) accessory
Summary
Water scarcity affects about two-thirds of the world’s population for at least a month of every year [1]. Separating the separation and photocatalysis functionalities increases process robustness because failure of one does not necessarily result in the failure of the other [8] Another advantage cited for this configuration is retention of particulates capable of shielding UV light on the feed side of the membrane, making photocatalysis more efficient because the permeated side has more optical transparency than the feed side. Researchers have focused on making photocatalytic membranes for water treatment by coating nano-sized photocatalysts on opaque materials such as ceramics, organic membranes and metals These membranes lack light transparency, requiring light to be directed through the water being treated to reach the photocatalyst coating on the substrate surface.
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