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Rice straw is causing in many countries severe environmental problems in terms of black clouds caused by the incineration process. Hence, among other reasons, the incorporation of ground rice straw as a filler and reinforcement material for polymers is of advantageous. In this study, Egyptian rice straw was used to reinforce commercial polypropylene and laboratory prepared maleic anhydride-grafted PP with the fill grades between 5wt% and 30wt%. Rice straw PP composites show an improved Young's modulus at increased fill grades, against a decrease in tensile strength. The addition of 1% maleic anhydride per I g of rice straw as a compatibilizing agent caused further amelioration of the fiber/matrix bonding leading to improved mechanical behavior, which was also assessed using scanning electron microscopy. Additional assessments were made via thermographic analysis and density measurements.

In this study, polyamide (PA) thin film composite (TFC) reverse osmosis (RO) membrane filtration was used in edible oil wastewater emulsion treatment. The PA-TFC membrane was characterized using mechanical, thermal, chemical, and physical tests. Surface morphology and cross-sections of TFCs were characterized using SEM. The effects of edible oil concentrations, average droplets size, and contact angle on separation efficiency and flux were studied in detail. Purification performance was enhanced using activated carbon as a pre-treatment unit. The performance of the RO unit was assessed by chemical oxygen demand (COD) removal and permeate flux. Oil concentration in wastewater varied between 3000 mg/L and 6000 mg/L. Oily wastewater showed a higher contact angle (62.9°) than de-ionized water (33°). Experimental results showed that the presence of activated carbon increases the permeation COD removal from 94% to 99%. The RO membrane filtration coupled with an activated carbon unit of oily wastewater is a convenient hybrid technique for removal of high-concentration edible oil wastewater emulsion up to 99%. Using activated carbon as an adsorption pre-treatment unit improved the permeate flux from 34 L/m2hr to 75 L/m2hr.

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