Extended Abstract

Novel in-situ photocatalytic membrane filtration for laundry wastewater treatment into
clean water
Muhammad Itsar Hanif and Ahmad Zulfikar Hanif
Advisor: Dani Puji Utomo, ST., MT.
SMA NEGERI SEMARANG
Email:
Abstract
Water pollution is an issue that has attracted great attention of the researcher after the world
faces clean water scarcity in many places. The decreasing of water quality due to water
contamination by the effluent waste from human activity is still continuing. The domestic
wastewater such as laundry effluent contributes vast amount of polluted water that contain
surfactants and organic contaminants. The treatment using membrane filtration have suffered
many problems such as fouling, high maintenance cost due to high cleaning intensity, low
clean water productivity. This project developed the hybrid process by combining the
photocatalytic activity of semiconductor metal oxide TiO 2 and polymeric membrane
filtration. The TiO2 photocatalyst was embedded into polysulfone membrane and the
filtration was performed under UV irradiation. With such process, the sieving-mechanism
and photocatalytic degradation occurred simultaneously that enhanced the separation
performance. The membrane was prepared via dry-wet phase inversion process. The
fabricated membranes were characterized for their structural properties and evaluated for
their permeability and selectivity performance. The electron microscope revealed that the
photocatalyst was well incorporated in the polysulfone matrix and the cross-section image
showed an asymmetric structure. The performance evaluation for laundry wastewater
treatment also exhibited that the photocatalytic membrane process enhanced the productivity
up to 380%. The surfactant removal was also increased up to 59.80% by the hybrid in-situ
photocatalytic membrane filtration. The UV irradiation helped as the photo-initiator for TiO 2
photocatalyst in degrading surfactants in wastewater. This process significantly reduced the
intensity of membrane cleaning, thereby it will reduce the operating cost. This process is also
potentially applicable in the small scale such as home laundry machine or commercial
laundry service. Therefore, the environmental problem can be mitigated from the root-cause
of the upstream by this technology approach.
Keywords: clean water, laundry wastewater, membrane, photocatalytic
Introduction discharge of complex polluted wastewater
is produced in relatively large portion.
Nowadays, the attempts of treating
Washing machines can typically produce
domestic wastewater have gaining
from 50 to 200 L of wastewater for every
considerable attention, including
time the machine is operated (Patil et al.,
developing approaches for the eco-friendly
2020). The major contributing pollutant
and low-cost treatment methods. As the
due to the laundry machine effluent is the
growth of human population which is
detergent, composed mainly of surfactants
getting continuously increase, the
that are not easily degraded in nature
(Jardak et al., 2016). Typically, the The membrane separation shows
concentration of synthetic surfactant in the great potential for the surfactants
domestics wastewater are range from 3 – contaminated water. Nevertheless, its
21 mg/L (Gupta et al., 2003). The presence application is limited by the fouling
of surfactants in water can damage the formation due to the organic deposition on
ecosystem and for longer exposure can the membrane surface that deteriorate the
affect the aquatic creatures and human life. performance (Abdel-Karim et al., 2018).
The study of toxicology reported that the Fouling is defined as membrane blockage
consumption of water that contains by organic dirt from the solute
surfactants above 0.5 mg/L can be harmful contaminant in the feed water. There are
to the health (Aboulhassan et al., 2006). two types of fouling i.e. common fouling
Thus, the proper treatment of discharged that is caused by organic substance
laundry wastewater is required to prevent deposition on the membrane surface and
the environmental damage. The inside the membrane pores. The bio-
contamination of surfactant into river body fouling is a type of fouling that comes
also deteriorates the soil quality. from the growth of microorganism on the
membrane surface . The colony of
There are several methods that
microorganism forms barrier that increase
have been developed in laundry or
the membrane resistance.
domestic wastewater such as biological
treatment (Dhouib et al., 2003), Therefore, in this project, the
coagulation (Aboulhassan et al., 2006), hybrid process is developed to solve the
flocculation (Nascimento et al., 2019), ion- aforementioned problems. The capabilities
exchange (Kowalska, 2008), ozonation of membrane in separating the molecular
(Beltrán et al., 2000), photocatalytic contaminant are utilized in this process.
degradation (Rawindran et al., 2019), The fouling formation during membrane
Fenton oxidation, and membrane filtration is mitigated by embedding
separation (Nascimento et al., 2019). photocatalytic nanomaterials such as TiO2
Biological treatment provides the simplest inside the membrane. The UV irradiation
method to degrade the pollutant however it was also applied during the filtration
takes long processing time, in some cases process to provide photon energy to
it requires 10 – 20 days processing activate the photoactivity of TiO2 in the
(Jegatheesan et al., n.d.). Moreover, the membrane (Kuvarega et al., 2018).
presence of surfactant in wastewater could Thereby, the surfactant pollutant attached
be toxic material for the microorganism on the membrane surface can be
involved in the biological process. The photocatalytically degraded by the in-situ
coagulation and flocculation are process. This proposed technology is
conventional methods that requires high expected to gain synergistic effect from the
amount of coagulant agent, these methods molecular separation of membrane and
can’t effectively coagulate the surfactants. photocatalytic degradation to mitigate
The advanced oxidation process such as fouling.
ozonation, photocatalytic, and Fenton
Objectives
process show excellent pollutant removal
(Pani et al., 2020). However, it requires This research project aims to
high-cost chemical additives that burdens develop a hybrid treatment process
the operating cost. comprising of photocatalytic degradation
and membrane separation for laundry
wastewater treatment. The proposed The characteristics of the laundry
technology is expected to be novel wastewater as shown in Table 1 has
treatment that possesses high treatment exceeded the permitted level regulated by
efficiency, low-cost, and eco-friendly. the regional government No. 82 Year
2001. Thus, the wastewater is supposed to
Research Methods and Approaches
be treated or else it will contaminate the
The execution methods used on environment and causes the health issues.
this study is a qualitative and quantitative
Table 1. the typical characteristics of
study where the data are obtained from
laundry wastewater obtained used in this
direct observation through experiments in
study
laboratory. The experiment series in this
study were material and equipment Parameter Value
preparation, polymeric membrane Temperature, °C 28 – 32
fabrication using phase inversion method, pH 9 – 10
characterizing the internal and surface Turbidity, NTU 100 – 210
morphological structure, and the filtration Surfactants, ppm 72 – 84
experiment using real laundry wastewater. COD, ppm 350 – 785
BOD, ppm 150 – 380
The obtained data were discussed TSS, ppm 120 – 280
scientifically and comprehensively Nitrogen total, ppm 6 - 21
according to the existing theory. The
results were also compared to the b. Photocatalytic membrane synthesis
conventional method to evaluate the
The photocatalytic membrane was
finding and contribution of this project in
fabricated via dry-wet phase inversion
wastewater treatment technology
method as reported by previous study
development.
(Jung et al., 2016). The polysulfone and
Research Stages polyvinyl pyrrolidone at concentration of
18% and 3%, respectively were dissolved
The research was performed in four in N-methyl-2-pirrolidone. The solution
stages to gain the informative and was agitated vigorously for 24 h. The TiO2
comprehensive results. The research stages photocatalyst was suspended into solvent
conducted in this study are follow: and then mixed into polymer solution. The
a. Materials and Equipment solution was then casted onto clean glass
Preparation plate with membrane thickness of 150 µm.
the film was subsequently immersed in
Materials for membrane fabrication deionized water for 24 h. the obtained
are polysulfone as main polymer, titanium membranes were dried in oven at 60°C for
dioxide (TiO2) as photocatalyst, polyvinyl 24 h.
pyrrolidone as pore-forming agent, N-
methyl-2-pirrolidone as polymer solvent, c. Membrane characterization
deionized water as coagulant fluid and The flat sheet membranes were
solvent. Real laundry wastewater obtained characterized for their surface and internal
from laundry service in Tembalang, structure under electron microscope. The
Semarang, Indonesia. The characteristics analysis was performed by sending the
of laundry wastewater used in this study is membrane sample to Universitas
presented in Table 1. Diponegoro Laboratory.
d. Experiments of laundry wastewater Figure 2. (a) The photocatalytic
treatment membrane filtration equipment set from
side view, (b) the configuration of UV
The filtration of laundry
light and membrane module inside the
wastewater was carried out using
photocatalytic filtration box
laboratory scale cross-flow filtration cell
featured with UV light type C as photon The evaluation of the technology
energy sour to initiate the performance is evaluated from the clean
photodegradation process. The schematic water productivity which is expressed as
diagram of the novel hybrid in-situ water flux and surfactants removal which
photocatalytic membrane filtration process is represented by COD rejection. The
is shown in Figure 1. stability of the membrane is evaluated by
evaluating the flux decline of both with
and without UV irradiation.
Result and Finding
a. Membrane morphological structure
Photocatalytic membrane
Figure 1. (a) Schematic diagram of in-situ morphology was evaluated using electron
photocatalytic membrane filtration, (b) real microscope with magnification of 20,000x
equipment assembly of the proposed and 1,000x for surface section and cross-
process in this project section, respectively. The membrane
The equipment of the structures obtained from electron
photocatalytic membrane filtration consists microscope are presented in Figure 3. The
of feed tank, water pump, photocatalytic membrane surface as show in sub-Figure
membrane filtration box that contains UV 3A has relatively smooth surface with
light and membrane module, control valve, white spots which are indicated as TiO 2
and pressure gauge as depicted in Figure 2. photocatalyst. There are no defect or
The general process of this proposed unselective void appeared on the
method is as follow: the laundry membrane surface. It indicates that the
wastewater is filled into feed tank; it is membrane was successfully fabricated.
then pumped to the membrane module by The sub-Figure 3B shows the cross-section
turning on the water pump; the pressure of image with typical asymmetric structure.
the upstream side is regulated using The asymmetric structure is the membrane
control valve; during the process, the UV structure that consists of multiple distinct
light is also turned on; the permeate will layers (Schulze-Küppers et al., 2020). The
pass through the membrane and flows top dense layer serves as selective layer.
downward into permeate collector tank; The intermediate layer which has finger-
while the retained flow will be recycled like structure plays role in maintaining
into feed tank to be re-processed. membrane structure due to compression
during filtration. The sponge-like structure
on the bottom layer, serves for water
permeation.
b. Performance of photocatalytic
membrane for laundry wastewater
treatment
 The photocatalytic membrane to the conductive band that has high
performance was evaluated for treating energy (Kopf et al., 2000). This state can
laundry wastewater using cross-flow change the water molecule into hydroxyl
filtration cell featured with UV irradiation. radical. The hydroxyl radical degrades the
For control variable, the filtration was also organic pollutant such as surfactants.
performed in dark condition to inactivate
photocatalytic degradation. The
comparison of flux profiles obtained from
UV irradiated filtration and dark filtration
are presented in Figure 4.

Figure 4. Flux profiles of conventional

membrane filtration (dark environment)
and photocatalytic membrane filtration
(under UV irradiation).

c. Contaminant removal efficiencies

The performance of membrane was also
evaluated from the capability of separating
pollutants in the wastewater. In this
project, the TDS, COD, and NH 3
parameters were evaluated for representing
the whole contaminants in the wastewater.
COD level indicates the surfactants and
other organic contaminants presents in the
Figure 3. Electron microscope images of
wastewater. Figure 5 shows that removal
photocatalytic membrane A) surface
efficiency of pollutant in UV irradiated
section at 20,000x and B) cross-section at
filtration and dark filtration (conventional
1,000x.
membrane filtration). The photocatalytic
The water flux profile of both with membrane exhibited higher removal
and without UV irradiation show slight efficiency for all contaminants type
decline along with filtration process. The especially for COD removal enhancement.
UV irradiated process exhibited great The higher COD removal was also shown
enhancement with approximately 380% of by UV irradiated filtration process where
flux enhancement. The UV irradiation help the removal was enhanced from 18.67% to
degrading the organic pollutant through 59.80%. This highest removal
reactive radical formation in the water. improvement could be due to the UV
The UV irradiation emitted photon energy irradiation act as photo-initiator for TiO2 in
that excited the electron from valence band generating hydroxyl radical. The radical
can degrade the organic substance that Parameter Treated Standard
causes high COD level. This experiment water
also revealed that the in-situ photocatalytic TSS, ppm 0.15 Max 100
membrane filtration process possesses the COD, ppm 120 Max 150
greater treatment performance over the NH3, ppm 0.23 Max 5
conventional membrane filtration. The pH 7.80 6–9
photocatalytic degradation also assists on Conclusion
removing the attached dirt on the The photocatalytic membrane has been
membrane that caused the blockage of the successfully fabricated. The
membrane. This process will significantly characterization analysis shows that
reduce the intensity of membrane cleaning, membrane has asymmetric structure. The
thereby it will reduce the operating cost. photocatalytic membrane filtration
significantly enhances the water
productivity up to 380%. For the removal
efficiency, the photocatalytic membrane
filtration improves the surfactants removal
up to 59.80%. The UV irradiation also
helps in mitigating fouling problem;
therefore, the intensity of the cleaning can
be reduced. This process is potentially
applied in the small scale such as home
laundry machine or commercial laundry
service because the module is modular that
Figure 5. he pollutants removal efficiency
can be scaled-up and scaled-down. The
of the laundry wastewater treatment
breakthroughs of the wastewater treatment
technology by approaching the green
technology and eco-friendly as well as
d. Quality of treated water cost-efficient will attract great attention
The main target of this project is to treat from many sectors.
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