For the textile industries, treatment of waste water including dyes is one of the challenging ecological issues. Among various techniques for the water treatment from textile industries, membrane filtration technologies have been regarded as a highly potential solution due to high efficiency, easy and steady operation condition, low maintenance cost and easy scale-up. Focussing on concentration polarization and fouling problems which are the most serious obstacles in the membrane technologies, our research group has suggested Mixed Matrix Membrane (MMM) based on polyimide and carbon nanotube (CNT) by non-solvent induced phase separation (NIPS). In the studies, an homopolymer (Matrimid) and two co-polymers(P84 and Torlon) were tested, and P84-MMMs were prepared with functionalized multiwalled carbon nanotubes (oxidized or aminated MWCNTs). In this study, simulation studies are performed and compared with the experimental results to improve the understanding about the fundamental aspect related to the MMMs and their performance. In particular, four important components of total MMM water treatment system such as polymer matrix, solvents, dyes and CNTs are analyzed by molecular dynamics simulation as well as quantum mechanics (QM) and mesoscale simulation.
Simulation study of mixed matrix membranes for wastewater treatment
Tocci Elena;Drioli Enrico
2014
Abstract
For the textile industries, treatment of waste water including dyes is one of the challenging ecological issues. Among various techniques for the water treatment from textile industries, membrane filtration technologies have been regarded as a highly potential solution due to high efficiency, easy and steady operation condition, low maintenance cost and easy scale-up. Focussing on concentration polarization and fouling problems which are the most serious obstacles in the membrane technologies, our research group has suggested Mixed Matrix Membrane (MMM) based on polyimide and carbon nanotube (CNT) by non-solvent induced phase separation (NIPS). In the studies, an homopolymer (Matrimid) and two co-polymers(P84 and Torlon) were tested, and P84-MMMs were prepared with functionalized multiwalled carbon nanotubes (oxidized or aminated MWCNTs). In this study, simulation studies are performed and compared with the experimental results to improve the understanding about the fundamental aspect related to the MMMs and their performance. In particular, four important components of total MMM water treatment system such as polymer matrix, solvents, dyes and CNTs are analyzed by molecular dynamics simulation as well as quantum mechanics (QM) and mesoscale simulation.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
