A novel radial flow microchannel separator for efficient micro/nano sized pollutants removal from industrial wastewater

Efficacious techniques for reducing chemical usage and lowering the cost of wastewater treatment are required globally. Microchannel separation has potential in industrial wastewater treatment, but overcoming the separation accuracy and treatment capacity trade-off is a challenge. Here, we reported a novel radial flow microchannel separator with hydrocyclone enhancing media regeneration, which achieves the simultaneous enhancement of both removal efficiency and treatment capacity for micro/nano sized pollutants separation from wastewater. Under the same equipment diameter, the treatment capacity is enlarged 5 times compared to the axial flow separator. The separation efficiency of nano-pollutant (50 nm) and microplastic pollutant (2.5 μm) reached 91 % and 96 %, respectively. The adhesion force and detachment force of pollutant and media particles were first quantified, and the hydrocyclone was confirmed to be effective in enhancing the detachment of micro/nano-pollutants. It is believed that a novel and efficient method for micro/nano sized pollutants removal from wastewater was provided, which also shows potential and value for the large-scale environmentally friendly treatment of industrial wastewater.