Research

Degradation of organic micropollutants in water using a novel thermocatalytic membrane

Read the article

Abstract

The increasing amount of organic micropollutants in our wastewater and surface water, caused by the industrialization, is a great risk to the environment and human life. Current biological treatments show minor efficiency for organic micropollutants removal, while advanced oxidation processes look more promising [1]. One viable solution in removing organic micropollutants is membrane filtration, e.g. nanofiltration. However, the water recovery by nanofiltration is limited due to the buildup of osmotic pressure caused by contaminants in the water, which results in large amounts of retentate with micropollutants to be handled [2]. In this context, it is important to continue improving the state-of-theart technologies and developing new technologies to overcome this environmental threat. As an innovative alternative, novel thermocatalytic microfiltration membranes have been developed in this study, to be used in wastewater treatment for continuous degradation of organic pollutants. Ceramic membranes were functionalized with a perovskite and showed remarkable degradation of endocrine disruptor bisphenol A, which was shown to accelerate when heating the membrane and feed stream from 22 to 60 °C. The membranes were characterized regarding pore size, gas and water permeability, degradation efficiency as well as their mechanical performance. As the perovskite is incorporated, the porosity and pore size increases, thus, increasing the permeability of the membrane, but still within the microfiltration range. On the contrary, the increased porosity and pore size reduces the mechanical strength of the membranes. The amount of perovskite incorporated in the membrane shows limited effect on the catalytic activity. Therefore, the thermocatalytic membranes were compared based on their characteristics to suggest the optimal composition and procedure for the fabrication of this new type of membranes for continuous micropollutant degradation based on the current knowledge.