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FOULING-RESISTANT CERAMIC MEMBRANES FOR TREATMENT OF METASTABLE OIL/WATER EMULSIONS - PHASE I
Description:
Billions of gallons of oily wastewaters are generated daily by a variety of industrial sources. One class of oily wastewaters, metastable oil/water emulsions, encompasses waste streams for which a need exists for more cost-effective and reliable treatment. Current treatment technologies for metastable oil/water emulsions are often costly and ineffective. Substantial impairment of water resources results from disposal of resulting inadequately treated waste streams. This proposal addresses development of a physical wastewater treatment process applicable to such waste streams, namely, crossflow ultrafiltration (UF) using novel ceramic membranes that are treated to have low-surface-free-energy, highly fouling-resistant surfaces. Processing of metastable oil-in-water emulsions with conventional UF membranes leads to rapid membrane fouling and flux decline and is generally uneconomic because of this problem.
In this program, ceramic UF membranes with modified low-energy surfaces will be developed using low cost, high-surface area, mechanically stable supports. The resulting membrane modules will be evaluated for filtration properties using different types of metastable oil-in-water emulsions. The objective of these experiments will be definition of preferred membrane modification techniques and demonstration of the capability of surface-modified membranes to maintain high, stable permeate flux levels while producing a substantially hydrocarbon-free permeate.