INTRNATIONAL HELLENC UNIVERSITY

Department of Chemistry
MSc in Oil and Gas Technology
Kavala, Greece
 
  
MOHAMMED ABUBAKAR ELLEMAN

MEMBRANE ON THE DECONTAMINATION OF INDUSTRIAL EFFLUENTS

  
Homework for the course “Business and Environment: Oil-spills and Environment”
   
Professor: Dr. George Z. Kyzas
   
Kavala 2020

HEAVY METAL REMOVAL

 • Introduction
• Heavy metals in industrial effluents
• Sources of Heavy metals
• Effects of heavy metals
• Membrane Tech for HM removal
Outline • Advantages/Disadvantages of Membrane
Technologies
• Other Conventional methods
• Future Prospect of Membrane Technology
• Conclusion
Removal of Heavy metals from Industrial Effluents
Heavy metals are the major contaminants of water/wastewater
due to their toxicity, non-biodegradability and persistence in the
environment. Certainly, industrial growth largely contributes
significant amount of heavy metals into different environmental
segments that include soil, water and air. In aquatic biota, fishes
and other species exposed to heavy metals may lead to
bioaccumulation, an environmental indicator of contamination.
Because of their high solubility in the aquatic environments, they
bioaccumulate in food webs, and adversely affect biota.
 Effects Of Heavy Metals
Almost all heavy metals are toxic to living beings, as indicated by World Health
Organization (WHO)as well as the United States Environmental Protection Agency
(USEPA) in the table below
Heavy metal Toxicities MCL (mg/L)
Arsenic (Ar) Skin manifestations, visceral cancers, vascular disease 0.050
 
Cadmium (Cd) Kidney damage, renal disorder, human carcinogen 0.01
Chromium (Cr) Headache, diarrhoea, nausea, vomiting, carcinogenic 0.05
 
Copper (Cu) Liver damage, Wilson disease, insomnia 0.25
Nickel (Ni) Dermatitis, nausea, chronic asthma, coughing, human carcinogen 0.20
 
Zinc (Zn) Depression, lethargy, neurological signs and increased thirst 0.80
 
Lead (Pb) Damage the fetal brain, diseases of the kidneys, circulatory system, and 0.006
  nervous system
Mercury (Hg) Rheumatoid arthritis, and diseases of the kidneys, circulatory system, and 0.00003
  nervous system
Sources of Heavy Metals from industrial Effluents

• Oil and Gas exploration & production activities

• Agricultural activities-Chemicals
• Mining Activities
• Extensive industrialization
• Municipal sewerage and many
• Several commercial industries
Conventional methods for water/wastewater treatment
• The conventional processes for removing pollutants from wastewater
include many processes such as chemical precipitation, flotation,
adsorption, ion exchange, and electrochemical deposition. Fig 1.
Membrane Technology

Membranes are thin

permeable materials
that separate
unwanted
substances from
solution when a
driving force is
applied

Figure 2 membrane process

 Membrane Technology
• Membranes technology attracted attention due to its advantages over many
processes for the removal of suspended solids, organic compounds and
inorganic effluents like heavy metals. The technology stands out as one of the
best water/wastewater treatment methods
• Environmental compatibility
• Reliability
• Appropriate stability
• Low energy consumption
• Flexibility
• cost effectiveness
• Simplicity
• Easy scale-up/upgrade
Membrane Processes
Different types of
Membrane processes
classified based on pore
sizes.

• Microfiltration (MF)
• Ultrafiltration (UF)
• Nanofiltration (NF)
• Reverse Osmosis (RO)
• FO, MD etc.
Different membrane modules

Figures show Tubular membrane and Spiral wound modules

respectively

Figure 3 Tubular membrane Figure 4 spiral wound

Different membrane modules

Figures 3 and4 show hollow fibre and Plate and frame respectively.

Figure 5 hollow fibre Figure 6 Plate & Frame

Different Membrane Materials
• Rubber
• Glass
• Metal
• Stone
• Ceramic
• Zeolite
• Composite materials
• Cellulose acetate

• Polyamide
• Polysulfones
• Polyvinylidene difluoride (PVDF)
Theory of membrane transport
• transport through membrane takes place when the driving force is
applied to the components in the feed
• the transport rate (flux) of a component is determined by the
permeability of the membrane and the driving force. The flux through
a membrane can be described by the equation.
•
• where J is a flux, P is a phenomenological coefficient expressing the
permeability of the membrane, and is the driving force.
Driving in different membrane processes
• The driving force may be the differences in;
• concentration,
• hydrostatic pressure,
• temperature, and
• electric potential
 Membranes Transport mechanisms
• There are two models used to describe the mechanism of membrane transport:
Solution-diffusion and pore-flow models.

• Solution-diffusion; Fick’s Law of diffusion

• Ji = −D.dci/dx

• where Ji is the rate of transfer of component i or flux (g/cm2·s) and dci/dx is the
concentration gradient of component i. The term Di is called the diffusion
coefficient (cm2·s) and is a measure of the mobility of the individual molecules.
The minus sign shows that the direction of diffusion goes down the concentration
gradient . Membranes under this model; MF, UF, NF
Membranes Transport mechanisms contd..
• Pore-flow models. Darcy’s law
• Ji = K.ci.dp/dx

• dp / dx represents the pressure gradient in the porous medium, ci is

the component concentration I in the medium and K ' reflects the
nature of the medium.
• Examples of membrane; RO
Membrane Flow Configurations
• There are two major membrane stream flow configurations: crossflow
and dead-end filtration
Membrane processes for the decontamination of heavy metals

• Factors that determine the efficiency of membrane

decontamination processes
• Type and nature of effluent
• pH of the feed stream
• Nature of the surface of membrane
• Initial concentration of the pollutants
• Flux (C, P, T, Electrical potential)
Advantages of membrane processes
• Cost-effective (cost coming down)
• low life-cycle costs
• Difficult contaminants degraded
• High-quality effluent produced
• Recovery of high-value products
• Recovery of energy
• Easy to expand the system/scale up
Disadvantages
The disadvantages of using membrane technology for
effluents decontamination include:

• The problem of fouling/scaling

• Membrane malfunctioning
Way forward
• Research into novel materials such as ceramic, graphene, zeolites and
relevant polymeric material in order to develop antifouling membrane
by modification of the membrane properties using chemical and
physical methods, reducing the surface roughness, improving surface
charge, selectivity, permeability and introducing chemical-resistance
material, while considering industrial applicability and cost
effectiveness of the membrane technology for environmental
decontamination of effluent, including heavy metals.
Conclusions
• The membrane is one of the best techniques for effluents treatment
because of several advantages, however, fouling/scaling and relative
cost of operation and maintenance are the major limiting factors for
its wider applications. Therefore research into affordable novel
materials would at long run solve the limiting factors while making
the making the technology affordable to the public