Elimination of bisphenol a from wastewater through membrane filtration processes

Abstract

New priorities for the environment have resulted in a reassessment of modern technology for treatment of urban wastewater. Urban wastewater treatment mainly involves the elimination or reduction of anthropogenic organic micropollutants in the aquatic environment. In this paper, the effectiveness of bisphenol A elimination from wastewater, after biological treatment, through a complex ultrafiltration/reverse osmosis purification process was evaluated. The effectiveness of the wastewater treatment process in the tested system was also evaluated with a number of other physical and chemical analyses for pH, turbidity, colour, absorbance, TOC, phenol index, conductivity and the concentration of selected heavy metals. Within this study, the change in the hydraulic performance of the membranes was also investigated. The effectiveness of the reduction of bisphenol A concentrations during the process of ultrafiltration was small, due to the significant difference between the size of the pores of the membrane and the size of eliminated micropollutants. In the process of reverse osmosis, the wastewater treatment system reported that the concentration of bisphenol A was reduced by 68%. In the tested treatment system, the ultrafiltration/reverse osmosis completely removed colour, lead and chromium. Other contaminants were eliminated by more than 31%. In both membrane processes, there was evidence that the membrane pores were blocked, but this occurred to a greater extent during the process of reverse osmosis.