Electro-assisted CNTs/ceramic flat sheet ultrafiltration membrane for enhanced antifouling and separation performance

Highlights

• A stable and electroconductive CNTs/ceramic membrane was fabricated.

• The membrane with the electro-assistance exhibited optimal fouling mitigation.

• The removal efficiency was improved by the -2.0 V electro-assistance.

• Electro-assisted filtration is energy-saving than that of commercial membrane.

Abstract

Ultrafiltration is employed as an important process for water treatment and reuse, which is of great significance to alleviate the shortage of water resources. However, it suffers from severe membrane fouling and the trade-off between selectivity and permeability. In this work, a CNTs/ceramic flat sheet ultrafiltration membrane coupled with electro-assistance was developed for improving the antifouling and separation performance. The CNTs/ceramic flat sheet membrane was fabricated by coating cross-linked CNTs on ceramic membrane, featuring a good electroconductivity of 764.75 S/m. In the filtration of natural water, the permeate flux of the membrane with the cell voltage of -2.0 V was 1.8 times higher than that of the membrane without electro-assistance and 5.7-fold greater than that of the PVDF commercial membrane. Benefiting from the electro-assistance, the removal efficiency of the typical antibiotics was improved by 50%. Furthermore, the electro-assisted membrane filtration process showed 70% reduction in energy consumption compared with the filtration process of the commercial membrane. This work offers a feasible approach for membrane fouling mitigation and effluent quality improvement and suggests that the electro-assisted CNTs/ceramic membrane filtration process has great potential in the application of water treatment.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

Ultrafiltration / Electro-assistance / CNTs / Membrane fouling mitigation

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Acknowledgements

The authors want to thank the financial support by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 21936002), Department of Science and Technology of Dalian (2018J11CY012), Liaoning Revitalization Talents Program (XLYC1801003), the Program of Introducing Talents of Discipline to Universities (B13012) and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (DUT19TD27).

Electronic Supplementary Material

Supplementary material is available in the online version of this article at https://doi.org/10.1007/s11783-020-1303-4 and is accessible for authorized users.

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