Application of thin film composite membranes with forward osmosis technology for the separation of emulsified oil-water

Large amounts of oily wastewater have been produced from various industries. The main challenge of oily wastewater treatments is to separate the stable emulsified oil particles from water. Therefore, the aim of this study is to investigate the effectiveness of forward osmosis (FO) processes to treat the stable oil-water emulsions. The FO technique has been demonstrated successfully for the treatment of a wide range of oil-water emulsions from a low to a very high concentration up to 200,000 ppm. The dependence of separation performance on oily teed concentration and How rate has been investigated. Water can be separated from oily feeds containing 500 ppm or 200,000 ppm emulsified oil at a relatively high flux of 16.5 +/- 12 LMH or 11.8 +/- 1.6 LMH respectively by using a thin film composite membrane PAN-TFC and 1 M NaCl as the draw solution. Moreover, this membrane can achieve an oil rejection of 99.88% to produce water with a negligible oil level. Due to the presence of emulsified oil particles in the oily feed solutions, the membrane fouling has been addressed in this study. Better anti-fouling TFC FO membranes are needed. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.