Feasibility of the highly-permselective forward osmosis membrane process for the post-treatment of the anaerobic fluidized bed bioreactor effluent

Daeeun Kwon, Soon Jin Kwon, Jeonghwan Kim, Jung Hyun Lee

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    12 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    A laboratory-made high-performance thin-film composite (TFC) forward osmosis (FO) membrane supported by a polyacrylonitrile (PAN) support was firstly employed to treat the effluent produced by an anaerobic fluidized bed bioreactor (AFBR). Synthetic wastewater was prepared to operate the AFBR, which produced the effluent for the FO process as post-treatment. The performance of the FO membrane was characterized via the measurement of the permeate flux, reverse salt (NaCl) flux and the rejection efficiency of ammonium nitrogen (NH4-N) mostly present in the AFBR effluent having low removal characteristics. An ultrathin and highly-crosslinked polyamide selective layer combined with the PAN support having a low structural parameter of the prepared PAN-supported TFC (PAN-TFC) membrane resulted in higher rejection to both nitrogen and salt compared to a commercial FO membrane. Importantly, the rejection of NH4-N higher than 70% was achieved by the PAN-TFC FO membrane. At 0.5 M NaCl draw solution, the PAN-TFC membrane exhibited the nitrogen flux of 0.92 ± 0.01 g m−2 h−1 and the permeate flux of 25 L m−2 h−1. The results demonstrate that the FO membrane can be one of the promising ways to effectively control the removal of contaminants present in AFBR effluent such as NH4-N as a post-treatment.

    Original languageEnglish
    Article number114451
    JournalDesalination
    Volume485
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 2020 Jul 1

    Bibliographical note

    Funding Information:
    This research was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant funded by the Korea government (MIST) ( NRF-2017R1A2B4007804 ). This research was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant funded by the Korea government (MIST) ( 2018R1A4A1022194 ).

    Publisher Copyright:
    © 2020 Elsevier B.V.

    Keywords

    • Anaerobic fluidized bed bioreactor
    • Energy
    • Forward osmosis
    • Thin film composite membranes
    • Wastewater reuse

    ASJC Scopus subject areas

    • General Chemistry
    • General Chemical Engineering
    • General Materials Science
    • Water Science and Technology
    • Mechanical Engineering

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