Membrane techniques for removal detergents and petroleum products from carwash effluents: a review

Abstract

One of the most significant urban services is the carwash, which generates large amounts of wastewater containing a variety of pollutants, including sand, gravel, suspended solids, surfactants, oil products, diesel cleaners, etc., that may cause environmental pollution when transferred to the sewage system without any treatment. The effective treatment is crucial to prevent environmental pollution as well as to recycle the water source. Contaminants are removed from carwash effluent using a variety of treatment technologies. This review focuses on identifying and comparing efficiency of using advanced commercial and modified membrane filtration techniques, meeting discharge standard regulations, to treat carwash impurities, especially detergents/surfactants (anionic surfactant) and petroleum products (oil/grease). The results of this review indicate that ultrafiltration membrane (UF) is the most common membrane filtration technology for carwash wastewater treatment. Additionally, the adoption of traditional pre-treatment processes may be advantageous before utilization of membrane process for treating carwash wastewater; although conventional treatment processes can produce a high quality of effluent, they are less effective than membrane systems.

The Application of Polyethersulfone Ultrafiltration Membranes for Separation of Car Wash Wastewaters: Experiments and Modelling

“…Furthermore, it should be noted that solutions used for washing cars contain a lot of chemicals and surfactants, hence, pose a serious threat to the environment [ 8 ]. Importantly, as outlined in a recently published review paper [ 9 ], the treatment of car wash wastewater is considered a new source of water. Indeed, effective recycling of wastewater allows us to reduce the consumption of freshwater [ 10 ].…”

“…Several studies documented the application of UF for the separation of carwash wastewater with the use of both ceramic [ 23 , 24 ] and polymeric [ 10 , 25 , 26 , 27 , 28 ] membranes. However, since the cost of manufacturing ceramic membranes is relatively high [ 9 , 29 , 30 , 31 , 32 ], polymeric ones are advantageous for industrial applications. According to Susanto et al [ 33 ], polyethersulfone (PES) is the most often used as the UF membrane material.…”