Separation of stable oil–water emulsion by the hydrophilic nano-sized ZrO2 modified Al2O3 microfiltration membrane

Recent progress in developing advanced membranes for emulsified oil/water separation

“…Recently, Chang and co-workers also prepared a nanosized zirconia-particle-modified Al 2 O 3 microfiltration membrane using ZrCl 4 as a precursor. 103 Similarly, the modified membrane exhibited an improved and stable flux for oil/water emulsion separation compared with the Al 2 O 3 microfiltration membrane without modification because of the high hydrophilicity of ZrO 2 . In addition to the zirconia-based filtration membrane, zeolite-and polymer-modified ceramic membranes were also investigated with regard to oil-in-water emulsion separation.…”

“…[94][95][96] Employing ceramic filtration membranes for oily wastewater treatment is also studied and reported by some researchers. [96][97][98][99][100][101][102][103][104][105][106][107][108][109] Because of the limitation of their pore sizes, directly employing ceramic membranes for the separation of emulsified oil/water mixtures would cause severe fouling problem and low fluxes. 99,104,108 Among the various ceramic filtration membranes, zirconia ceramic membranes exhibit better performance than others for oily wastewater treatment.…”

Treatment technologies for emerging contaminants in water: A review

“…Despite several advantages, MF cannot remove contaminants of size <1 µm (i.e., dissolved solids) and it is not useful for the removal of ECs [127,128]. Figure 2.…”

Demulsification of stable emulsions from produced water using a phase separator with inclined parallel arc coalescing plates

“…Among the technologies that have been applied in produced water treatment are separation by hydrocyclones (Motin et al, 2013;Walsh and Georgie, 2012), microfiltration (Campos et al, 2002;Chen et al, 2009;Luo et al, 2014;Mecha and Pillay, 2014;Motta et al, 2014;Zhou et al, 2010), ultrafiltration through polymer membranes (Cheryan and Rajagopalan, 1998;Muppalla et al, 2015;Obaid et al, 2015;Tansel et al, 1995), wetlands (Rambeau et al, 2004), adsorption (Twaiq et al, 2012) and aerated lagoons (Beyer et al, 1979). Biological treatment systems such as activated sludge have been also utilized for the removal of stable emulsions from produced water (Tellez et al, 2002;Tellez et al, 2005).…”