Fabrication of high-performance pervaporation composite membrane for alkaline wastewater reclamation

Pervaporation desalination has a unique advantage to recycle concentrated salt solutions. The merit can be applied to treat alkaline wastewater if the membrane has superior alkali-resistance. In this paper, we used polyethylene microfiltration membrane as the substrate and deposited a glutaraldehyde crosslinked sodium carboxymethylcellulose layer by spray-coating. Pervaporation flux of the composite membrane reached 35 ± 2 kg·m−2·h−1 with a sodium chloride rejection of 99.9% ± 0.1% when separating a 3.5 wt-% sodium chloride solution at 70 °C. The desalination performance was stable after soaking the membrane in a 20 wt-% NaOH solution at room temperature for 9 d and in a 10 wt-% NaOH solution at 60 °C for 80 h. Moreover, the membrane was stable in 4 wt-% sulfuric acid and a 500 mg·L−1 sodium hypochlorite solution. In a process of concentrating a NaOH solution from 5 to 10 wt-% at 60 °C, an average water flux of 23 kg·m−2·h−1 with a NaOH rejection over 99.98% was obtained.