Research to-date has reported the presence of endocrine disrupting compounds (EDCs),
pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs) usually at sub µg/L concentrations
mostly in surface water and to a lesser degree in ground and drinking water (Richardson and
Ternes, 2005). Since limited knowledge is available on health effects related to the
consumption of drinking water containing trace amounts of EDCs/PPCPs, removal of these
compounds during drinking water production is desirable. Pressure driven membrane
processes such as nanofiltration (NF) and reverse osmosis (RO) may be promising techniques
for the removal of these emerging micropollutants. Removal mechanisms of these
micropollutants by nanofiltration include the perspective of interaction between the compound
and the membrane. The study distinguishes between three compound-membrane interactions; namely
size exclusion, electrostatic repulsion and adsorption. These interactions are determined by
compound properties (molecular weight/size, charge, hydrophobicity) and membrane
properties (MWCO (molecular weight cut-off)/pore size, surface charge, hydrophobicity).
Operational problems such as fouling (decrease in membrane flux over time) has hampered
the acceptance of RO and NF technologies (Kaiya et al., 1996). Membrane fouling
characteristics were described as pore blockage, pore restriction and cake formation. Recent
studies (Xu et al. 2006 ; Plakas et al. 2006 ; Agenson et al. 2007) have reported that membrane
fouling can significantly affect the separation behavior of organic micropollutants, resulting
in either an increase or decrease in retention as compared to a clean membrane. These studies
have focused on fouling caused by secondary effluents, humic substances and activated sludge
or landfill leachate. To our knowledge few, if any, studies have focused on the impact of
fouling by surface waters on the removal of micropollutants. The objective of this study was to
simultaneously evaluate the fouling potential and removal performance of thin film composite
nanofiltration membranes. Experiments were conducted in ultrapure water and surface water
spiked with two pharmaceutical active compounds, namely naproxen and carbamazepine. Includes 7 references, table, figures.
| Edition : | Vol. - No. |
| File Size : | 1
file
, 300 KB |
| Note : | This product is unavailable in Ukraine, Russia, Belarus |
| Number of Pages : | 5 |
| Published : | 11/01/2007 |
