TEHRAN (ANA)- Researcher at the Tehran-based Amirkabir University of Technology (AUT) have developed a new technique to treat wastewater using copolymer membrane filtration.
The AUT researchers have offered a cost-effective method for treating oily wastewater by using thermodynamic analysis and evaluation of copolymer membrane performance.
“To improve the performance of the copolymer membrane in water treatment, theoretical studies have to be directed to the study of the thermodynamic equilibrium of copolymer solutions and related thermodynamic models in order to find a fundamental view of the macroscopic properties by establishing a relationship between them and the membrane structure in order to design membranes with optimal performance,” Afshin Hamta, Ph.D. student at the AUT and the executive director of the project "Thermodynamic Surveying and Performance Evaluation Of Poly(Styrene-Acrylonitrile) Copolymer Membrane" said.
Hamta also said that polymer membranes properties cannot be predicted and can only be measured and assessed after the membrane is made.
He added that the findings of their project can be helpful in the production of technical know-how of using copolymers in membrane processes and also in predicting the copolymerization properties of the respective homopolymers.
A copolymer membrane is a type of membrane made from two or more different polymers that can be used for water treatment. These membranes can improve the adsorption capacity, stability, and selectivity of single polymer membranes.
“Of the most important benefits and achievements of the results of this project is saving time, energy and consumables in testing different copolymers in membrane processes. Because if it is possible to predict the properties of the copolymer from the respective homopolymers, the previously obtained data can be used and the expected properties of the copolymer can be predicted,” he went on to say.
“The findings of this project will be used in the water industry and oily wastewater treatment,” he continued.
Noting that their project has no foreign equivalent, he added, “The improvement and modification of the proposed method and the presented models to develop its application and use in all kinds of polymers are this project’s results.”
He further said that introducing a model with the lowest possible error for predicting the properties of copolymer solutions, surveying the molecular behavior of copolymer solutions, and making copolymer membranes for treating oily wastewater with 99% separation rate are among the features of the project done by them.
“This project avoids spending huge costs to test all types of membranes in a laboratory and enables the possibility of predicting and checking membrane properties before any test,” Hamta further asserted.
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Source: ANA