Investigation of using UV/H2O2 pre-treatment process on filterability and fouling reduction of PVDF/TiO2 nanocomposite ultrafiltration membrane

Abstract In this paper, the effect of UV/H2O2 advanced oxidation as a pretreatment process on the performance of a TiO2/PVDF nanocomposite membrane was investigated in degradation and mineralization of Reactive Green 19 dye solution as an organic contaminant model. In the first step, the UV/H2O2 process was optimized by the response surface methodology (RSM). Results were shown that the number of UV lamps, H2O2 concentration and temperature were important factors for the AOP process. Then, the PVDF membrane was fabricated by the non-solvent induced separation process and modified by embedding TiO2 nanoparticles. The morphology of modified membrane was assessed by SEM images and EDX mapping analysis. Moreover, the performance of bare and modified membranes was evaluated by measuring pure water flux, dye rejection and flux decline. Outcomes were shown that by TiO2 introduction, the membrane performance has significantly improved. Finally, the effect of UV/H2O2 pretreatment on performance of membranes was assessed. The membrane antifouling feature after the AOP pretreatment of the dye solution has considerably improved. Additionally, the COD removal efficiency of the UV/H2O2-membrane process was measured in the batch and continuous regimes. The COD removal efficiency for the continuous (UV/H2O2) + (PVDF+TiO2) process, 63.64% removal yield, was the best performance.