No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

The main problem usually faced by commercial ceramic membranes in the treatment of produced water (PW) is low water flux even though ceramic membrane was well-known with their excellent mechanical, thermal, and chemical properties. In the process of minimizing the problem faced by commercial ceramic membranes, titanium dioxide (TiO2) nanocomposites, which synthesized via a sol-gel method, were deposited on the active layer of the hydrolysed bentonite membrane. This paper studied the influence of grafting time of TiO2 nanocomposite on the properties and performance of the coated bentonite membranes. Several characterizations, which are Fourier transform infrared (FTIR), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy-dispersive X-ray Spectroscopy (EDX), contact angle, porosity, and average pore size, were applied to both pristine and coated bentonite membranes to compare the properties of the membranes. The deposition of TiO2 nanoparticles on the surface of the coated bentonite membranes was successfully confirmed by the characterization results. The pure water flux performance showed an increment from 262.29 L h−1 m−² bar−1 (pristine bentonite membrane) to 337.05 L h−1 m−² bar−1 (Ti-Ben 30) and 438.33 L h−1 m−² bar−1 (Ti-Ben 60) as the grafting time increase but when the grafting time reached 90 min (Ti-Ben 90), the pure water flux was decreased to 214.22 L h−1 m−² bar−1 which is lower than the pristine membrane. The oil rejection performance also revealed an increase in the oil rejection performance from 95 to 99%. These findings can be a good example to further studies and exploit the advantages of modified ceramic membranes in PW treatment.

This research aimed to improve the hydrophobic polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) membrane for direct contact membrane distillation (DCMD) desalination by mixing various additives (dibutyl phthalate and glycerol) in polymer solution via twostage/dual coagulation bath (CB) system. The effect of each additive on the surface and cross-sectional morphology of PVDF membrane was investigated. The addition of additives showed increased in membranes porosity, but the water contact angle was less than 90° when immersed in single CB (distilled water). Membrane prepared with two-stage CB system immersed into methanol CB for 20 min and transferred into distilled water CB for 24 h exhibited high water contact angle of 114.2°, 142.6° and 120.1° for membrane M-3, M-4 and M-5, respectively. The porosity of membrane significantly increased when incorporated with additives. The membrane was further evaluated in DCMD operation for separation performance. The DCMD tested using distilled water and 35 g l-1 of sodium chloride (NaCl) aqueous solution in feed showed M-4 achieved the highest flux among other membranes at 13.85 kg-2 m-2 h-1 with 99% salt rejection under 70°C of feed temperature.