Journal
JOURNAL OF MEMBRANE SCIENCE
Volume 622, Issue -, Pages -Publisher
ELSEVIER
DOI: 10.1016/j.memsci.2020.119003
Keywords
Forward osmosis; Organic macromolecules; Engineered nanoparticles; Membrane fouling; Molecular interaction
Categories
Funding
- National Natural Science Foundation of China [51778597, 51821006]
- CAS Light of West China Program [2019XBZG_JCTD_ZDSYS_001]
- Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities [WK3530000003]
- National & Local Joint Engineering Laboratory for Municipal Sewage Resource Utilization Technology, Suzhou University of Science and Technology [2019KF01]
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This study found that the presence of TiO2 can effectively reduce membrane fouling caused by alginate in forward osmosis process, by alleviating alginate aggregation and binding fouling. The behavior and mechanisms of membrane fouling were characterized using various analytical methods.
Forward osmosis (FO) is a promising technology for water treatment, but its fouling mechanisms are poorly understood compared to other membrane-based processes. This study focuses on combined fouling caused by alginate (SA) and TiO2 nanoparticles, which serve as representative organic and inorganic foulants, respectively. The results show that the co-presence of TiO2 can effectively mitigate membrane fouling by SA under vas feed chemistries (Ca2+ concentrations). The negative charge of the SA foulants increased in the presence of TiO2 , alleviating SA aggregation due to electrostatic and steric stabilization. The behavior and mechanisms of membrane fouling were characterized by attenuated total reflection-Fourier transformation infrared spectroscopy (ATR-FTIR) coupled with isothermal titration calorimetry (ITC) and atomic force microscopy (AFM) at the molecular level. Combined SA-TiO2 had a lower binding affinity to Ca2+ than single SA, which was spontaneously exothermic and dominated by electrostatic interaction to reduce membrane fouling. This study provides new insight into the mechanisms of nanoparticles-mediated organic fouling in the FO process. It also demonstrates that an integrated ATR-FTIR/ITC/AFM approach can provide useful information for understanding other complicated interactions between inorganic and organic foulants.
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