Forward osmosis (FO) is an emerging process for dewatering solid-liquid stream which has the potential to be innovative and sustainable. However, the applications have still been hindered by low water flux and membrane fouling when activated sludge is used as the feed solution due to bound water from microbial cells. Hence, a novel strategy was designed to increase sludge thickening and reduce membrane fouling in the FO process under ultrasonic condition. The results from the ultrasound/FO hybrid system showed that the sludge concentration reached up to 20,400 and 28,400 mg/L from initial sludge concentrations of 3000 and 8000 mg/L with frequency of 40 kHz after 22 hours, while the system without ultrasound had to spend 26 hours to achieve the same sludge concentration. This identifies that the presence of ultrasound strongly affected sludge structure as well as sludge thickening of the FO process. Furthermore, the ultrasound/FO hybrid system could achieve NH4+-N removal efficiency of 96%, PO4(3-)-P of 98% and dissolved organic carbon (DOC) of 99%. The overall performance demonstrates that the proposed ultrasound/FO system using seawater as a draw solution is promising for sludge thickening application.
In this study, Polyacrylonitrile (PAN) fibers were prepared by a simple and effective electrospinning method. Subsequently, the PAN fibers were modified by diethylenetriamine (DETA) to produce aminated polyacrylonitrile (APAN) fibers. Finally, the adsorbability of copper ions on the surface of the fibers was examined in an aqueous solution. The characteristics of APAN fibers were analyzed using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and X-ray diffraction (XRD); The surface amination was confirmed by FTIR. The adsorption data fitted well with the Freundlich isotherm. Thermodynamic parameters of the adsorption process were calculated. The standard Gibb's free energy change, standard enthalpy change, and standard entropy change was -1.46 KJ/mol, -54.72 kJ/mol, and -178.75 kJ/mol/K, respectively. Furthermore, the results show that adsorption of copper onto APAN fibers were spontaneous and exothermic in nature. The equilibrium adsorption capacity of PAN fibers was only 0.10 mg g(-1) for 10 mg L(-1) of copper solution removal under pH 6 and 298 K. In contrast, the equilibrium adsorption capacity of APAN fibers was 45.05 mg g(-1) under the same conditions. The prepared APAN fibers exhibit high efficiency for Cu(II) removal from Waste water and may be used as a reference for future investigation.
It is recognized that recycling and reuse of waste can result in significant savings in materials and energy. In this research, the adsorption of methyl blue (MB) using waste rice husk ash (Rha) and mesoporous silica materials made from Rha (R-MCM) were analyzed. Mesoporous silica materials were synthesized using cetyltrimethyl ammonium bromide (CTAB) as a cationic surfactant and Rha as the silica source. The prepared samples were characterized by Brunnaur-Emmet-Teller (BET) adsorption isotherm analyzer and transmission electron microscope (TEM) analysis. The results showed the surface area of R-MCM materials was 1347 m2g-1 and the pore volume was 0.906 cm3g-1. TEM analysis showed that the mesoporous materials generally exhibited ordered hexagonal arrays of mesopores with a uniform pore size. The effects on adsorption performance under different initial dye concentrations, different pH values and different dosages of adsorbent were also studied. Both Langmuir and Freundlich adsorption models were applied to describe the equilibrium isotherms. The results show that the maximum removal efficiency of MB more than 99%.
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