A sustainable supply of clean water is the biggest challenge of this century as the demand for potable water is increasing worldwide. The reclamation and reuse of water from the domestic and industrial discharge units is a well-known strategy for recovering clean water from wastewater. For this purpose, membrane-based techniques have proved less energy intensive than the existing approaches for treating wastewater and seawater desalination. In this research, transition metal oxide namely Praseodymium oxide (Pr₂O₃) is covalently bonded by an in-situ approach to the growing network of the triamine-functionalized MCM-41 leading to Pr-3NH2-MCM-41. The Pr-3NH2-MCM-41 material was characterized using Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Energy Dispersive X-Ray (EDX) analysis, powder X-ray diffraction (PXRD), Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET), and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). Varied weight ratios of Pr-3NH2-MCM-41 were then dispersed to the aqueous solutions of linear aliphatic tetra-amine. A polyamide active layer containing Pr-3NH2-MCM-41 was created through interfacial polymerization using n-hexane solution of terephthaloyl chloride (TPC) over PSf/PET support. After thorough characterization, the resultant three membranes were tested for their performance effectiveness using a crossflow filtration system. The fabricated membranes (0.05Pr-3NH2-MCM-41-PA/Psf@PET) have shown a flux of 34 L/m²h with the rejection of divalent and monovalent ions (MgSO₄, MgCl₂, CaCl₂, Na₂SO₄ and NaCl) as 97% and 88% respectively. Moreover, the selected pharmaceutical products as famous micropollutants (Caffiene, Sulfamethoxazole, Amitroptyline and Loperamide) were rejected by up to 97%

Isam H. Aljundi

Appearances