Tight ultrafiltration polyethersulfone membrane for cheese whey wastewater treatment

Abstract For the removal of naturally existed hazard organic substances from surface water and wastewater, a facile way to fabricate tight ultrafiltration membrane was employed. A new composite membrane has been developed by using the cutting-edge features of metal organic framework MOF of cerium (Ce) to enhance the performance of polyethersulfone (PES) membrane. A sonochemical method, was implied for the synthesis of cerium organic framework, Ce- anthranilic acid, (Ce-AnthMOF), then 0–1 wt, % loading amount Ce-AnthMOF were embedded in the polymeric solution of PES. Applying phase inversion technique, the PES, PES1, PES2 and PES3 ultrfiltration (UF) membranes were fabricated. Both, Ce-AnthMOF and the new membranes were well characterized by different spectral analysis. The study shows a significant enhancement in the hydrophilicity and permeability performance along with increasing Ce-AnthMOF content. Augmenting the hydration layer reduces the pore blocking mechanisms during membrane filtration process and leads to the tendency of a high antifouling surface. Regarding to Humic acid (HA) ultrafiltration results, the water flux recovery (FRR) for PES2 increased significantly compared with pristine PES to be 70% with fixed flux of 19 LMH and rejection of 99%. Additionally, the molecular weight cut-off (MWCO) results for polyethylene glycol permeate samples showed that PES2 has MWCO of 1800 Da with pore radius of 1.1 nm. PES2 membrane characterized with tight selective layer with pore size distribution of ~ 10 nm. Testing PES2 for the treatment of whey wastewater shows tremendous removal percent of total chemical oxygen (COD), Biological oxygen demand (BOD), Total suspended solids (TSS) and turbidity with 99.8%, 99.7%, 99.8% and 99.6%, respectively. This approach collocates the technique towards the establishment of an economy and an effective treatment for cheese whey wastewater.