Citation:
Özgün H, Sakar H, Ağtaş M, Koyuncu İ. (2022) Investigation of pre‑treatment techniques to improve membrane performance in real textile wastewater treatment. International Journal of Environmental Science and Technology, Volume 20, Issue 2, February 2023, pp. 1539–1550
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.
