Abstract
This research is aimed to investigate the efficacy of membrane separation technology in treating coke oven wastewater (COW). A comparative study was conducted using three types of membranes: commercial polymeric (CP) membrane, commercial ceramic (CC) membrane, and synthesized ceramic (SC) membrane. The potential of the SC membrane in COW treatment was assessed in comparison to the CC membrane, which had a molecular weight cut-off (MWCO) of 1 Kilo-Dalton. The experiments were conducted under various trans-membrane pressure (TMP) conditions ranging from 1 to 4 bar. Additionally, the effect of the CP membrane on COW treatment was examined at TMP levels ranging from 5 to 25 bar. The research findings revealed that the SC membrane exhibited promising results in terms of permeability and flux compared to the CC membrane. Also, a significant reduction was observed in various water parameters such as TSS decreased by 89.74%, chlorides by 8.24%, nitrogen by 10%, and hardness by 22%. Moreover, the study was carried out by implementing an anti-fouling mechanism to mitigate fouling effects on membrane performance.
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Acknowledgements
The authors acknowledge VA Tech Wabag Limited for providing Grants. The authors would also like to extend special thanks to the Department of Chemical Engineering, Institute of Chemical Technology, Mumbai, for providing instruments and other facilities.
Funding
The authors are thankful to the VA Tech WABAG Limited for financial support (1842/VA Tech WABAG Date: 17/04/2023).
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Ankita Yadav: conceptualization, design and planning of the experiments, carried out experiments, formal analysis, and drafting of the manuscript. Shubham D. Salekar: carried out experiments and regular discussion. Nitin V. Thombre: conceptualization, design and planning of the experiments, carried out the experiments, resources, formal analysis, editing of the manuscript, and supervision. G S Saxena: supervision, review. Anand V. Patwardhan: resources, supervision, review, and editing.
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Research highlights
• Coke oven wastewater was successfully treated and compared with commercial polymeric, commercial ceramic and synthesized ceramic membranes
• Adoption of synthesized ceramic membranes as a high-performance solution for critical separation processes in the coke oven industry
• In the case of the synthesized membrane the silt density index (SDI) was found to be 2.04
• 0.2% w/w of NaClO was found to be suitable for achieving flux recovery for both polymeric and ceramic membranes
• Results produced by this work can be utilized to scale up the process to the industrial scale
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Yadav, A.A., Salekar, S.D., Thombre, N.V. et al. Coke oven wastewater treatment using polymeric and ceramic membranes. Environ Sci Pollut Res (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-024-33745-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-024-33745-5