Abstract
Membrane distillation (MD), as a hybrid desalination technology with super-hydrophobic characteristics, has been emerging in the recent year. In this contest, the outstanding features of carbon-based nanomaterials have promising potential to contribute to the MD process evolution. This work presented an endeavor to impart the super-hydrophobic features of powder activated carbon (PAC) into poly(vinylidene fluoride-co-hexafluoropropylene) (PVDF-HFP) membranes for DCMD applications. The FTIR indicates that the CNM was successfully coated onto the PVDF-HFP membrane which leading to higher contact angle values (from 83° to 124°, porosity (45% 86.9%) and water distillate flux at each increment in the PAC loading weigh. The novel coated membranes with 30 mg CNM led to an enhancement of the permeate flux (higher fluxes were obtained at higher CNMs loading) presented fluxes around 77 L/m2.h and exhibited a high salt rejection (> 99.9%) in most cases.
Highlights
Membrane distillation (MD) is a separation process based on the vapor partial pressure difference across a hydrophobic membrane and is able to efficiently treat high saline water (P. Wang and Chung 2015)
carbon-based nanomaterials (CNMs)/powder activated carbon (PAC) facilitate the development of the porosity, pore size, and hydrophobicity, and form a resistance layer to prevent the growth of microorganisms (Kochkodan and Hilal 2015)
A minor prevalence of a crystalline phase was observed in the PVDF-HFP membrane based on the existence of transmittance peaks at 528, 614, 760, 795, 840, 876, and 973 cm−1
Summary
Membrane distillation (MD) is a separation process based on the vapor partial pressure difference across a hydrophobic membrane and is able to efficiently treat high saline water (P. Wang and Chung 2015). The hydrophobic characteristics of any surface rely to a large extent on the chemical composition and geometrical features of the surface (Ma and Hill 2006; Zhu et al 2014). With their exceptional features, CNMs/powder activated carbon (PAC) facilitate the development of the porosity, pore size, and hydrophobicity, and form a resistance layer to prevent the growth of microorganisms (Kochkodan and Hilal 2015). The abovementioned characteristics have contributed to the strong interest in and attention to CNMs/PAC-based membranes of various structures (Alayan et al 2020; Fornasiero et al 2008)
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