Dye removal from colored textile wastewater using acrylic grafted nanomembrane

In this paper, the dye removal ability of the acrylic grafted polysulfone nanomembrane using ultraviolet radiation was studied to remove dyes from colored textile wastewater. Acrylic acid was used to modify polysulfone ultrafiltration membrane. The effect of different operating parameters such as pressure, salt concentration and chemical structure of dyes was evaluated. Data indicated that the photografted membrane has acceptable performance both in terms of flux and rejection. The dye rejection and hydraulic permeability were 86-99.9% and 7.6 m(-2) h(-1) bar(-1), respectively. It was found that the rejection of dyes decreased with salt concentration due to a decrease of the Donnan effect. Also, the low molecular weight dyes and highly charged dyes were more sensitive in the presence of salts. Addition of 80 mM Na2SO4 in dye solution decreased the dye rejection more than 15%. The rejection enhancement for all cases was negligible by increasing driving pressure from 1 to 4 bar. Dyes with low charger were more sensitive to operating pressure than that of dyes with higher charges. All findings supported that acrylic grafted nanomembrane is potentially capable to separate dyes from colored textile effluent. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.