• Solvent tolerant nanofiltration and reverse osmosis membranes for purification of industrial aqueous streams
  • Development of new, robust nanofiltration membranes with competitive performance in various  solvent/water mixtures and demonstration of their performance on relevant industrial streams (TRL 6)
Project website
2017-2021
976 517

Pieter Vandezande

+32 14 33 56 39
Contact

VITO’s role

  • Systematic lab scale testing of developed membranes on synthetic model mixtures, incl. development of standardized test protocols, benchmarking against commercial membranes and data acquisition for membrane/process model
  • Pilot testing of selected membranes/modules on real industrial streams under relevant conditions, evaluation of longer term performance and robustness, development of cleaning protocols

Abstract

Many industrial process streams contain both water and solvents, in addition to other organic components. Such streams need to be purified from these components or be treated before further processing, discharge or incineration. Polymeric nanofiltration membranes nowadays widely used in (waste)water treatment typically exhibit high permeability and stable rejection. They offer a more sustainable and energy efficient alternative to currently used conventional separation technologies. However, if a solvent is present in the aqueous feed stream, these performances are often lost due to phenomena like swelling and membrane degradation. This behavior proves to be a major obstacle, hindering widespread implementation of membrane technology in water/solvent streams.

This project aims to tackle this challenge by development of new, robust nanofiltration membranes with competitive performance in a wide range of solvent/water mixtures and able to separate and substantially concentrate small organic compounds from such streams. The membranes will be tested on various relevant industrial process and waste streams, and benchmarked against commercial nanofiltration membranes. The most promising candidates will be tested at pilot scale to demonstrate long term robustness and performance. A data driven model will be created to identify critical process parameters and predict membrane behavior under industrial conditions. A techno-economic evaluation of the test cases will be made, as well as a roadmap for implementation of promising membranes after the project.