Preparation of Tailor Made Membranes and Their Performance Study Regarding Hydroquinone Removal from Water

Abstract

There is no doubt that water is a precondition for all lives on the earth. It keeps us alive literally while being a prerequisite for an integral part of most of our daily activities. Growing pressure on water resources from population and economic growth, climate change, pollution, and other challenges has major impacts on our social, economic, and environmental well-being. With the advancements of new technologies and industrial growth fresh water resources all over the world is being threatened. There is no doubt that the quantity of sewage is a global factor. It is seen that two million tons of sewage, industrial and agricultural waste is discharged into the world's waterways. The contaminants in waste water include soaps and detergents, cooking oils, pesticides, paint, gasoline, seawater, pharmaceuticals, solid waste and, of course, human waste. As the fresh water resource is limited, the treatment of waste water is foremost required. It also prevents waterways from disposal. Contamination of water has been a serious concern all over the world due to exposure to many sources of pollution creating many harm. The main use of pesticides is for benefit of human being, but sometimes, due to improper handling, it may become the powerful enemy of human. Through water as path pesticides easily goes in direct (drinking water) as well as in indirect manner (in food chain). The consciousness among the people regarding the priority to drink safe water is growing. There are various techniques (viz. active carbon filtration, UVirradiation-H2O2) to separate pesticides from water. Membrane separation technique is the one which is of importance as due to inherent characteristics such as low cost energy consumption and simple operation. Thus, Membrane separation technique is one of the “Green Technology”.

The pressure driven membrane techniques (as in reverse osmosis, nano-filtration) are basically based on the principle of Osmosis. The interfacial polymerization of m-Phenylene Diamine (MPD) (2% in water) and Tri-Mesoyl Chloride (TMC) (0.1% in hexane) is done on Polysulfone membranes on the asymmetric polysulfone membranes induce the salt rejection property in it. The separation of hydroquinone through the membranes showed trend as i.e. the salt rejection decreases on increasing concentrations of salt, the performance removal of hydroquinone is better increasing. As this are negatively charged TFC so repels positively charged NaCl .The hydroquinone separation obtained in neutral pH was 80.63% in 1000mg/L NaCl solution whereas in acidic pH, NaCl separation was influenced much more compared to hydroquinone. Characterization of these Polysulfone membrane and TFC was done.FTIR shows the presence of Polyamide (cross-linked) structure on the thin film composite (TFC) membrane. The measurement of contact angles shows that Polysulfone is having contact angle 74.12° whereas the TFC shows contact angle 60.32°.The Scanning Electron micrograph study shows that there is distinct difference in the morphology of the virgin Polysulfone membrane and thin film composite membranes. The addition of surfactants also increased the separation performance. To increase seperation performance efficiency of membrane addition of SLS is done as 50 to 250 (mg/L) on Hydroquinone solution. Addition of SLS shows a promising result with enhancing seperation at 200 psi by saving energy.