Anti-fouling characteristic of carbon nanotubes hollow fiber membranes by filtering natural organic pollutants

摘要

Membrane fouling is a universal problem for conventional membrane filtration that usually causes a deterioration in membrane performance. We used electro-assisted carbon nanotubes hollow fiber membranes (CNTs-HFMs) to investigate the anti-fouling properties using natural organic pollutants. Benefiting from the electro-assistance, the permeation flux of humic acid solution using CNTs-HFMs was 190.20 L/(m(2)center dot h center dot bar), which was about 1.5- and 4.4-times higher than those of CNTs-HFMs without electro-assistance and traditional polyvinylidene fluoride hollow-fiber membranes (PVDF-HFMs). And the permeation fluxes of bovine serum albumin, sodium alginate and supernatant of anaerobic bioreactor also presented similar results. The average COD removal rate of CNTs-HFMs (66.8%) at -1.0 V was higher than that of CNTs-HFMs without electro-assistance and PVDF-HFMs, which can be attributed to the formation of electrostatic repulsive force. It could reduce the deposition of pollutants on membrane surface under electroassistance.