Engineered Slippery Surface to Mitigate Gypsum Scaling in Membrane Distillation for Treatment of Hypersaline Industrial Wastewaters

Membrane distillation (MD) is an emerging thermal desalination process, which can potentially treat high salinity industrial wastewaters, such as shale gas produced water and power plant blowdown. The performance of MD systems is hampered by inorganic scaling, particularly when treating hypersaline...

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Published inEnvironmental science & technology Vol. 52; no. 24; pp. 14362 - 14370
Main Authors Karanikola, Vasiliki, Boo, Chanhee, Rolf, Julianne, Elimelech, Menachem
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published United States American Chemical Society 18.12.2018
Subjects
Blowdown
Comparative analysis
Contact angle
Desalination
Distillation
Electric power generation
Fluorides
Gypsum
Industrial wastes
Membranes
Nanoparticles
Polyvinylidene fluorides
Power plants
Recovery
Saline water
Salinity
Salinity effects
Scaling
Shale
Shale gas
Silica
Silicon dioxide
Surface energy
Surface properties
Wastewater
Wastewater treatment
Water treatment
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Summary:Membrane distillation (MD) is an emerging thermal desalination process, which can potentially treat high salinity industrial wastewaters, such as shale gas produced water and power plant blowdown. The performance of MD systems is hampered by inorganic scaling, particularly when treating hypersaline industrial wastewaters with high-scaling potential. In this study, we developed a scaling-resistant MD membrane with an engineered “slippery” surface for desalination of high-salinity industrial wastewaters at high water recovery. A polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) membrane was grafted with silica nanoparticles, followed by coating with fluoroalkylsilane to lower the membrane surface energy. Contact angle measurements revealed the “slippery” nature of the modified PVDF membrane. We evaluated the desalination performance of the surface-engineered PVDF membrane in direct contact membrane distillation using a synthetic wastewater with high gypsum scaling potential as well as a brine from a power plant blowdown. Results show that gypsum scaling is substantially delayed on the developed slippery surface. Compared to the pristine PVDF membrane, the modified PVDF membranes exhibited a stable MD performance with reduced scaling potential, demonstrating its potential to achieve high water recovery in treatment of high-salinity industrial wastewaters. We conclude with a discussion of the mechanism for gypsum scaling inhibition by the engineered slippery surface.
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ISSN:0013-936X
1520-5851
DOI:10.1021/acs.est.8b04836