Investigation of pre-treatment techniques to improve membrane performance in real textile wastewater treatment

H. Özgün, H. Sakar, M. Ağtaş, I. Koyuncu*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

6 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Membrane technology has a significant role in textile wastewater treatment considering the modular design of the membrane processes that enables to conceive a complete treatment scheme. The study presents a comparative study of microfiltration (MF) (0.2 µm and 0.05 µm), ultrafiltration (UF), ozonation (0.1, 0.2 g/L ozone), ultraviolet (UV) irradiation and titanium dioxide (TiO2) (0.05, 0.15, 0.3, 0.5 g/L TiO2) and zeolite adsorption (125, 250, 500 mL/min flow rates) processes as pre-treatment prior to nanofiltration (NF) and reverse osmosis (RO) membranes for the treatment of real textile washing wastewater (WW). Experiments demonstrated that the applied pre-treatment methods enhanced the flux performance of NF270 and RO membranes except zeolite adsorption. By evaluation of all pre-treatment alternatives, it was seen that the best chemical oxygen demand (COD) removal efficiency (41%) was achieved with MF0.05 membrane. The highest conductivity removal efficiencies were obtained by UV/TiO2 application and with ozonation process the colour of the wastewater was removed at a performance of 80.5%, that was the highest among all pre-treatment applications. Based on the permeate flux and quality, the best pre-treatment method was selected as MF membrane with a pore size of 0.05 µm. Best conductivity removal efficiency was obtained by MF0.05 + XLE membrane combination at 93.6%. Also, considerably high COD removals were achieved with pre-treated NF and RO combinations together with a significant colour elimination (> 98%). In this study, it is aimed to create an efficient system that can be applied in real textile wastewater treatment by creating a combined treatment process.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1539-1550
Number of pages12
JournalInternational Journal of Environmental Science and Technology
Volume20
Issue number2
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Feb 2023

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2022, The Author(s) under exclusive licence to Iranian Society of Environmentalists (IRSEN) and Science and Research Branch, Islamic Azad University.

Keywords

  • Membrane technology
  • Nanofiltration
  • Pre-treatment methods
  • Reverse osmosis
  • Textile wastewater

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Investigation of pre-treatment techniques to improve membrane performance in real textile wastewater treatment'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this