Porous Nanocomposites Membranes for Water Treatment Application

Industries worldwide are developing advanced systems to enable the treatment and reuse of wastewater. Oil and grease represents the main component of wastewater, and their removal is considered a major challenge. Current treatment methods include physical, chemical, and electrical schemes, to remove dissolved pollutants and permit water reuse. This presentation will outline the fabrication and testing of polymer membranes and media filters to remove oil residual from wastewater in the oil & gas industry. The materials used in this work consist of different polymer matrices prepared through multiple techniques including electrospinning, cold zone annealing, solvent and oven annealing followed by UV or plasma etching. Additionally, the polymeric matrix is doped with multiple nanocomposites to increase the efficiency, chemical, thermal and mechanical stability of the polymeric medium. Fabricated membranes and media filter are tested using synthetic oily water and real-field samples and testing protocols from the oil & gas companies in Qatar. In addition, we will highlight the utilization of nanocomposite membranes for the forward osmosis (FO) process. FO has recently attracted significant attention to be combined with the reverse osmosis in water desalination due its low energy consumption, low membrane fouling and high water flux.

Funding: This publication is made possible by NPRP grant 10-0127-170269 from the Qatar National Research Fund (a member of Qatar Foundation). The statements made herein are solely the responsibility of the authors.