Treatability studies of oily wastewater using cellulose acetate membrane modified by carbon based additives

Abstract

Population growth as well as industrial activities have created a demand for freshwater. Nowadays, the quality of freshwater gets deteriorated due to unethical discharge of wastewater from industries into streams and rivers. Removal of oil from industrial wastewater is considered as one of the major challenging problems faced by industries. In general, conventional techniques are employed for the removal of oil from wastewater. Literature studies reveal that the conventional techniques are not feasible for removing small-sized oil droplets (and#706; 20 and#956;m) from wastewater. To overcome the difficulties faced by newlineconventional methods, advanced treatment techniques such as Ultra-Filtration (UF) membranes are generally employed for the separation of an oil-in-water emulsion. The main advantages of using membrane technology include energy efficiency, reliability and ease of operation. Polymeric membranes are generally employed for the separation of oil from wastewater. Incorporation of carbon-based additives to the polymeric membranes improves their hydrophilicity, strength and anti-fouling properties. The present work focuses on the treatability studies of oily wastewater using the polymeric membrane modified by carbon-based additives. Cellulose Acetate (CA) powder was used as a polymer matrix material because of its lowcost, high hydrophilicity, diversified pore size, biocompatibility and better salt rejection properties. Rubber (Hevea brasiliensis) Seed Shell Activated Carbon (RSSAC) / Graphene Oxide (GO) was used as an additive and N-N, Dimethylformamide (DMF) was used as a solvent for UF membrane fabrication. The current study has assessed the removal rate of Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD) and oil and grease from automobile wash water. The automobile wash water was collected and characterized following the American Public Health Association (APHA) standard. newline newline