Sustainable Management of Textile Wastewater: A Hybrid Tight Ultrafiltration/Bipolar-Membrane Electrodialysis Process for Resource Recovery and Zero Liquid Discharge

Abstract

Sustainable textile wastewater treatment strongly demands an indispensable paradigm shift from removal of contaminants to effective recovery of resources. In this work, a hybrid tight ultrafiltration (TUF) and bipolar-membrane electrodialysis (BMED) process was explored to recover resources (i.e., dye extraction, acid/base conversion, and pure water regeneration) from highly saline textile wastewater. Using a TUF membrane with 5000 Da molecular weight cutoff (MWCO) can obtain a sufficient rejection (>99.6%) of both reactive and direct dyes, due to the dye aggregation. Additionally, the considerably large pore size of the TUF membrane endowed the process with free transport of NaCl and Na2SO4 (i.e., >99.42%), exhibiting promise as an alternative means of separation of dyes and Na2SO4. Additionally, an integrated TUF-based diafiltration was designed to separate the model dye (i.e., reactive blue 194) and Na2SO4. Particularly, reactive blue 194 was remarkably concentrated from 997.9 to 7952.8 mg·L–1 by the TUF membrane with 99.5% dye recovery and 99.95% desalination efficiency after 8.0 diavolumes. Furthermore, a trace amount (i.e., 2.7 mg·L–1) of reactive blue 194 was observed in Na2SO4-containing TUF permeate, enabling a subsequent BMED operation. With the implementation of BMED, the Na2SO4-containing TUF permeate was sufficiently desalinated for acid/base conversion and pure water regeneration with no obvious fouling on the ion exchange membranes. These results demonstrate a potential applicability of the hybrid TUF/BMED process for sustainable management of textile wastewater, providing a strategy for practical applications in treatment of other high-salinity wastewaters.

A Feasible Method Applied to One-Bath Process of Wool/Acrylic Blended Fabrics with Novel Heterocyclic Reactive Dyes and Application Properties of Dyed Textiles

“…The union dyeing property (k) is an important index to determine the color match between dyed acrylic and wool fabric, which were calculated using Equation (4). k = K S wool K s acrylic (6) where (K/S) wool and (K/S) acrylic are the K/S values of dyed wool fabric and acrylic fabric, respectively.…”

“…However, large amounts of surfactants are used to avoid the reaction between cationic dyes for acrylic and anionic dyes for wool in one-bath dyeing, which has a serious effect on the environment [5]. As we all know, textile wastewater is one of the most important pollution sources in the textile industry, causing serious damage to the ecosystem and lives [6,7]. Hence, the development of dyes applied for the one-bath processing of wool/acrylic fabrics will become an active research area in printing and dyeing as it reduces the effluent and improves the dyeing effectiveness.…”

Polydopamine-Assisted Two-Dimensional Molybdenum Disulfide (MoS2)-Modified PES Tight Ultrafiltration Mixed-Matrix Membranes: Enhanced Dye Separation Performance

“…Tight ultrafiltration (TUF) membranes have received increasing attention from water treatment and resource recovery in recent years [ 1 ]. Especially in the treatment of dye wastewater, the TUF membrane of mesoporous shows more beneficial effects than nanofiltration (NF) membranes, not only because of the relative lower operating pressure required by the TUF process, but also because of the pore size characteristics of TUF membranes.…”

A Review on Ion-exchange Membranes Fouling and Antifouling During Electrodialysis Used in Food Industry: Cleanings and Strategies of Prevention

“…In order to reduce the concentration of undesirable molecules and organic foulants in the feed solutions of the ED stacks, filtration systems were often experimented upstream of the processes. These kind of pretreatments were principally used for waste water recovery, and drinking water treatments [22][23][24]. As example, Lu et al [24] proved the ability of ultrafiltration membrane (UF) upstream to ED (EDUF) process to facilitate treatment of antibiotic wastewater, recovering antibiotic synchronously and limiting IEMs fouling.…”