Industrial Nickel Wastewater Rejection by Polyimide Membrane

Abstract

Membrane distillation (MD) is one of the emerging thermal driven membrane separation processes in wastewater treatment attributed to its lower energy requirement and able to couple with waste heat relative to pressure driven process. In this study, polyimide was used as the polymeric materials in hollow fiber membrane fabrication whereas 1-methyl-2-pyrrolidone (NMP) was use as solvent for synthesize industrial wastewater in nickel removal. The properties of the fabricated membrane were found to possesses the optimum characteristic in terms of LEP, porosity, inner diameter and morphology as reported in literature forthe application of DCMD. The permeate flux performance in the range of 67 to 79 kg/m2h with the rejectionrate of more than 98.80 % suggested that the PI membrane possesses the potential to be applied in the industrial wastewater treatment in nickel removal.