(540h) Industrial Wastewater Treatment Using Porous Nanocomposite Membranes

Industries worldwide are developing advanced systems to enable the treatment and reuse of wastewater. Oil and grease represents the main component of wastewater, and their removal is considered a major challenge. Current treatment methods include physical, chemical, and electrical schemes, to remove dissolved pollutants and permit water reuse. This presentation will outline the fabrication and testing of polymer membranes and media filters to remove oil residual from wastewater in the oil & gas industry. The materials used in this work consist of different polymer and copolymer membrane matrices prepared via multiple techniques including electrospinning and non-volatile additive solvent annealing process. Additionally, the polymeric matrices are doped and coated with multiple nanofillers to increase their efficiency, chemical, thermal, and mechanical stability. Fabricated membranes and media filter are tested using synthetic oily water and real-field samples and testing protocols from the oil & gas companies in Qatar. One examples included the formation of hydrophobic microporous polystyrene (PS) fibers that are doped with silver-doped zinc oxide (Ag-ZnO), and was fabricated by solvent induced phase separation assisted electrospinning method. Presence of 2 wt. %, of Ag-ZnO created micro pores on the PS fibers surface and enhanced the pore size and distribution as well as the oil adsorbing property and its hydrophobicity. The PS/2Ag-ZnO composite also exhibit the highest antibacterial performance against Staphylococcus aureus, a general indication of anti-biological fouling properties of these oil-separating films.

In addition, we will highlight the utilization of nanocomposite membranes for the forward osmosis (FO) process. FO has recently attracted significant attention to be combined with the reverse osmosis in water desalination due its low energy consumption, low membrane fouling and high water flux.

Funding: This publication is made possible by the NPRP 12S-0306-190247 grant from the Qatar National Research Fund (a member of Qatar Foundation). The statements made herein are solely the responsibility of the authors.