Abstract
Insufficient removal of microplastics (MPs) and nanoplastics (NPs) may exert negative effects on the environment and human health during wastewater reclamation. The fertilizer-driven forward osmosis (FDFO) is an emerging potential technology to generate high-quality water for irrigation of hydroponic systems. In this study, the removal of MPs/NPs by the FDFO process together with their impact on FDFO membrane fouling was investigated, due to FDFO’s low molecular weight cut-off and energy requirement by using fertilizer as draw solution. Plastic particles with two different sizes (100 nm and 1 μm) and extracellular polymers released by real wastewater bacteria were utilized as model compounds for FDFO performance comparison. Results show that FDFO membrane system could generate high-quality irrigation water with only fertilizer, completely removing extracellular polymers, MPs and NPs from wastewater. It was found that the MPs and NPs themselves do not cause a significant membrane fouling. Moreover, it could help to reduce the membrane fouling caused by extracellular substances. That is probably because MPs and NPs helped to form a loose and porous fouling layer. Therefore, the FDFO process could be a long-term stable (low fouling) process for the reclamation of wastewater with high-quality requirements.
Highlights
With the population increase, economic development and different consumption style, freshwater demand has increased dramatically in the past decades, leading to a clean water scarcity in the world
liquid chromatography-organic carbon detection (LC-OCD), fluorescence excitation-emission matrix (FEEM) and 1H nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) have been applied to characterize the organic composition of synthetic wastewater and evaluate the fertilizer-driven forward osmosis (FDFO) performance on removing those contaminants
In the LC-OCD chromatograms, biopolymers with high molecular weight (>20,000 Da) are normally the first portion of organics eluted out of the column, and followed by humics and building blocks with a molecular weight around 1000 Da, and low molecular weight (LMW) neutrals and acids (
Summary
Economic development and different consumption style, freshwater demand has increased dramatically in the past decades, leading to a clean water scarcity in the world. According to the World Water Development Report 2018, 47% of the world’s population lives in regions that face water scarcity for at least one month of the year [1]. By 2050, the number of people suffering this problem will rise by 10%, and nearly 60% of the world’s population will be facing water scarcity at least one month of the year [1]. The discharge of wastewater in the world exceeds 2.2 trillion m3/year [2]. In China, as a rapid developing economy of the world, the total wastewater discharge volume was ~70 billion m3/year in 2017 [3]. It could be a substantial measure to release the pressure of freshwater demand
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