The Use of Functionalized Mesh-Based Membranes to Separate Low Concentration Oil Contaminations from Wastewater

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Current Water Technologies Inc. (formerly ENPAR Technologies Inc.) located in ON, Canada is a watertreatment company that is focused on the treatment of industrial municipal, run-off and flood water. Thecompany has high experience and strong expertise in separation of contaminations and chemicals such asarsenic, nitrate, ammonia, sulfate, hydrocarbons and other organic matter. To solve the problem of clients intreatment of oily wastewater systems, the company is interested in separating the organic compounds in aprocess that minimizes the negative impacts of solids. Current technologies to separate the oil contaminants arenot energy efficient and they are composition dependent. In dilute oil contaminations, the oil volume issignificantly smaller than that of the water phase, so the separation process has to be highly selective to makethe process sustainable and economically viable. Conventionally, hydrophilic membrane separation is used inthe oil-water separation. This method suffers from low energy efficiency for the dilute oil concentrationbecause the membrane pressure drop and maintenance correlate to the flow rate of the permeate. Although, thecompany believes in hydrophobic membranes to solve this problem, they are not able to implement the ideadue to the lack of expertise in design of this particular membrane. Thus, we propose a novel oil-waterseparation methodology, using functionalized mesh-based membranes that only allows the permeation of oil.These membranes will be utilized in a process design that continuously separates the oil at a lower energyinput. It features a higher separation efficiency while reducing the maintenance costs due to membrane damage.The proposed idea targets industries that produce oily wastewater. It will particularly benefit Canada tomaintain its pioneering position in developing sustainable processes with minimized environmental footprints.Canadian industries such as heavy oil production (AB, SK, and BC), aviation (QC), automobile manufacturing(ON), agriculture (SK, ON), fishery (NL), and food processing (in most provinces) can potentially benefit fromthe research outcomes.