Mixed Matrix Membrane Immobilized Powder Activated Carbon for Chromium, Cadmium and Lead Removal

Nurul Ain, Mohamed Alipah (2023) Mixed Matrix Membrane Immobilized Powder Activated Carbon for Chromium, Cadmium and Lead Removal. Masters thesis, UNIMAS.

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Abstract

Recent advancement on industrial activities have led to the usage and production of abundance of heavy metals, which has resulted in contaminations to the environment. These metals are nonbiodegradable and could be hazardous to the environment. Numerous approaches have been studied for the solution of this issue, while recent development has combined both membrane filtration technologies and adsorption technique for the removal of heavy metal from the water sources. In this study, the heavy metals removal was investigated by using adsorption with powder activated carbon (PAC), polyethyleneimine (PEI) and also silver nanoparticle followed by the membrane filtration. The Psf/PAC/PEI/Nano-Ag membranes which were prepared with different compositions of PAC ranging from 0 to 2.0 wt% by applying phase inversion technique to eliminate the residual heavy metals remained in the effluent of adsorption process. The performance and characteristics of fabricated membranes were evaluated in terms their morphologies of membranes (SEM), functional groups presence (FTIR & XRD), porosity, water flux, contact angle, removal efficiency of heavy metal and adsorption process (AAS). Based on the SEM observations, the membrane matrix formed were symmetric with a sponge structure. Among all the membranes, membrane CM 6 with 2.0 wt% PAC has demonstrated the highest water flux but lowest rejection level of heavy metals (chromium, lead, and cadmium). On the other hand, membrane CM 3 with 0.3 wt% PAC was found to be the most optimal composition for heavy metal removal and cadmium’s rejection which is 28.52% was shown to be the uppermost among all other metals for the composite membrane, possibly attributed to its small ionic radii. This research was extended by performing the batch kinetic studies on the evaluation of membrane CM 6’s adsorption capacity and contact time on Pb (II) removal. iii Pb (II) ions adsorption has increased as the contact time increased, and approaching equilibrium state at the time of 170 minutes and qe = 0.069 mg/g. The adsorption kinetics was explained by putting Pseudo-First-Order (PFO), Pseudo-Second-Order (PSO) and Intraparticle Diffusion (ID) models to a test. The findings have shown that kinetic adsorption has best fitted into intraparticle diffusion model and PFO, with the value of R2ID = 0.974 and R2 PFO = 0.983 that demonstrates the adsorption of Pb (II) has formed monolayer of adsorbate on the PAC adsorbent surface, and thus the diffusion process of Pb (II) occurred on the pore surface PAC. Hence, it was concluded that the study on the investigation of integrated membrane and adsorption approach with the incorporation of PAC, PEI and silver nanoparticles has further enhanced the heavy metal removal process, which could be beneficial to the industrial applications.

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