Fouling resistant sericin‐coated polymeric microfiltration membrane

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Greywater and produced water are undoubtedly valuable resources for reclaimed water, which can lessen the burden on use of freshwater. However, most often the membrane technology used for treatment of greywater and produced water suffers massively from fouling-related issues. In the present study, a novel and facile method is successfully developed for modification of polypropylene (PP) microfiltration (MF) membrane via surface coating with sericin for imparting better antifouling properties.RESULT: The membrane hydrophilicity significantly improved after sericin coating and exhibited high water content (64.87%) and low water contact angle (38 ∘ ). In a comparative study with synthetic greywater, the sericin-coated membrane removed <90% turbidity and produced a greater volume of purified water with 15% less fouling compared to the uncoated membrane. The fouling experiment concludes that the sericin-coated membrane can reduce reversible and irreversible fouling by ≈30% and ≈83.00%, respectively, relative to the uncoated membrane using pure water backwash operation. In the second case, the sericin-coated membrane was able to provide consistent permeate quality with produced water: chemical oxygen demand <43 ppm, biological oxygen demand <6.8 ppm, suspended solids completely removed, total dissolved solids <112 ppm, turbidity <5 NTU and oil content <0.044 ppm, together with 10.5% less fouling than uncoated membrane. CONCLUSION: This study reveals that sericin coating enhanced membrane hydrophilicity and hence exhibited better antifouling properties. The sericin-coated MF membrane effectively treated greywater as well as produced water with less fouling and withinlimits of national standards for reusability. NOMENCLATURE A Membrane area (m 2 ) J Volumetric permeate water flux (m 3 m -2 s -1 ) J 1 Pure water flux after each backwash (m 3 m -2 s -1 ) J 2 Pure water flux of the fouled membrane at the end of each cycle (m 3 m -2 s -1 ) J c Pure water flux of cleaned membrane (m 3 m -2 s -1 ) J o Pure water flux of new membrane (m 3 m -2 s -1 ) J w Pure water flux (m 3 m -2 s -1 ) P m Permeability (m 3 m -2 s -1 Pa)P tm Transmembrane pressure (kPa) t Time (s) V Volume of permeate (m 3 ) W d Weight of dry membrane (g) W w Weight of wet membrane (g) m Density of membrane (g L -1 ) w Density of isopropanol (g L -1 ) Effect of temperature During membrane coating, sericin solution was circulated at different temperatures of 10, 20, 30 and 40 ∘ C to evaluate the effect of temperature on the coating of sericin to PP membrane surface J Chem Technol Biotechnol 2019; 94: 3637-3649

Immobilization of functional biomolecules onto polypropylene fabric using plasma pre-treatment

“…Peng et al 35 described a four-step modification of PP nonwoven fabrics with "Piranha" solution, KH-550 and glutaraldehyde subsequently to bridge native type I collagen. Similarly, a antifouling membrane 36 is prepared by the coating of sericin to PP hollow fibre microfiltration membrane. The immobilization of chitosan or sericin on the crosslinker-impregnated PP fabric using supercritical fluid are also reported.…”

Performance enhancement of commercial ultrafiltration polysulfone membrane via in situ polymerization of aniline using copper chloride as a catalyst

“…Biological processing of materials, food processing industries and pharmaceutical industries need the latest hybrid membranes to overcome the problem of biofouling 1–4 . Foulants in industrial wastes or found in natural substances not only interact physically with membrane surfaces but can also lead to deterioration of the chemical structure of membranes permanently 5–10 . Pressure‐driven processes for protein separation are more likely to damage membranes due to high operational pressure.…”