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

Current Water Technologies Inc.(前身为ENPAR Technologies Inc.)加拿大安大略省是一家水处理公司，专注于工业市政、径流和洪水的处理。该公司在分离污染物和砷、硝酸盐、氨、硫酸盐、碳氢化合物和其他有机物等化学品方面拥有丰富的经验和强大的专业知识。为了解决客户在含油废水系统处理中的问题，该公司有兴趣在一种将固体的负面影响降至最低的过程中分离有机化合物。目前分离石油污染物的技术并不节能，而且它们依赖于成分。在稀油污染物中，油的体积明显小于水相的体积，因此分离过程必须具有高度的选择性，才能使该过程可持续和经济可行。传统的油水分离多采用亲水膜分离。这种方法对稀油浓缩的能效较低，因为膜压降和维持率与渗透液的流量有关。尽管该公司相信疏水性膜可以解决这个问题，但由于缺乏设计这种特殊膜的专业知识，他们无法实现这一理想。因此，我们提出了一种新的油水分离方法，使用仅允许油渗透的功能化网状膜，这些膜将被用于以较低的能量输入连续分离油的工艺设计。它的特点是分离效率更高，同时降低了由于膜损坏而造成的维护成本。加拿大重油生产(AB、SK和BC)、航空(QC)、汽车制造(ON)、农业(SK、ON)、渔业(NL)和食品加工(大多数省份)等行业可能从研究成果中受益。

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.