Photocatalytic Degradation of Oil using Polyvinylidene Fluoride/Titanium Dioxide Composite Membrane for Oily Wastewater Treatment

Abstract

Abstract. Production of industrial wastewater is increasing as the oil and gas industry grows rapidly over the years. The constituents in the industrial wastewater such as organic and inorganic matters, dispersed and lubricant oil and metals which have high toxicity become the major concern to the environment and ecosystem. There are many technologies are being used for oil removal from industrial wastewater. However, there are still needs to find an effective technology to treat oily wastewater before in can be discharge safely to the environment. Membrane technology is an attractive separation technology to treat oily wastewater. The aim of this study is to fabricate polyvinylidene/titanium dioxide (PVDF/TiO2) composite membrane with further treatment using hot pressed method to enhance the adhesion between TiO2 with the membrane surfaces. In this study the structural and physical properties of fabricated membrane were conducted using X-ray diffraction (XRD) and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) respectively. The photocatalytic degradation of oil was measured using UV-Vis Spectroscopy. The FTIR results confirmed that, hot pressed PVDF/TiO2 membrane TiO2 was successfully deposited onto PVDF membranes surface and XRD results shows that the XRD pattern of PVDF//TiO2 found that the crystalline structure was remained unchanged after hot pressed. Clear water was obtained after synthetic oily wastewater was exposed to visible light for at least 6 hours. In conclusion, PVDF/TiO2 composite membrane can be a potential candidate to degrade oil in oily wastewater and suggested to possess an excellent performance if perform simultaneously with membrane separation process.

Applications of Emerging Nanomaterials for Oily Wastewater Treatment

“…However, at higher concentration, agglomeration (white circle) was observed and resulted in the formation of voids which tend to compromise the oil rejection properties. Another study on oily wastewater done by Rusli et al showed an oil removal efficiency of 60% within 6 hours of treatment using a hybrid PVDF/TiO2 membrane where the photocatalyst was hot pressed onto a PVDF flat sheet membrane for better adhesion (Rusli et al 2016).…”

Polymer-Based Membranes for Oily Wastewater Remediation

“…The production of oil and gas by petroleum refineries yields a large amount of wastewater, containing mostly organic compounds (aliphatic and aromatic hydrocarbons), inorganic compounds (metals), and dissolved and suspended solids [1].…”

Recent Progress on Tailoring and Modification of Membranes for Membrane Distillation: A Review

“…This membrane is mainly utilised in the membrane distillation process as it offers a feature such as versatility and low thermal conductivity (0.1−0.5 W•m −1 •K −1 ) [47]. For the fabrication of polymeric membranes, the most widely utilised methods include phase inversion, interfacial polymerisation, stretching, track-etching, and electrospinning [4,33,[48][49][50][51][52][53][54][55][56]. Phase inversion is the most widely used method to prepare a membrane for the membrane distillation process.…”