Antibiotics separation from saline wastewater by nanofiltration membrane based on tannic acid-ferric ions coordination complexes

Excessive discharge of saline antibiotics wastewater into aquatic ecosystem is one crucial environmental issue facing the world today. Herein, an eco-friendly nanofiltration (NF) membrane was fabricated based on coordination complexes of tannic acid and ferric ions (TA-Fe) to selectively separate antibiotic and monovalent salt. Optimal membrane with Fe/TA molar ratio of 3/1 and coordination time of 60 s exhibited Zeta potential of −26.0 mV (pH = 7), water contact angle of 45.5o and pore radius of 0.36 nm. Consequently, [email protected] membrane showed high ciprofloxacin/NaCl rejection ratio of ~5.9 and considerable water permeability of 20.6 ± 1.2 LMH. Besides, relatively high rejection rates were obtained for ofloxacin (94.1 ± 2.2 %) and ciprofloxacin (91.9 ± 2.5 %), while rejection rate for trimethoprim was much lower (68.2 ± 4.1 %). Effects of static/dynamic membrane adsorption of antibiotics on subsequent removal performance were investigated for the first time. Rejection rate improvements of 7.4–15.2 % were observed on pristine membrane compared with pre-adsorbed membrane in short-term NF process. Electrostatic shielding experiment and rejection rate prediction further distinguished the contributions of steric hindrance, electrostatic interaction and membrane adsorption on antibiotics removal, especially antibiotics in zwitterionic form at pH = 7. The findings of this work imply that this newly developed NF membrane has great potential for efficient treatment of antibiotics-contaminated wastewater.