(152bc) Development of an Efficient and Cost-Effective Photocatalytic Membrane Reactor for the Separation of Dye from Wastewater

Due to the growing world population and their activities, industries are expanding tremendously. One of the significant industries is the textile industry. According to survey (Malwal & Gopinath, 2017), more than 100,000 different dyes are produced in significant quantities ~700,000 tonnes and about 15% of these dyes are directly released into the effluent. Many textile industries dump their effluent in natural water sources such as rivers and lakes without any (or without significant) post-treatment. Unfortunately, many of these dyes are mutagen and cause several types of cancer in human beings. Therefore, there is a crying need to develop technologies that can remove dye efficiently from water, efficiently and easily. Existing technologies to eliminate dye from water are adsorption, electrochemical treatment, membrane separation, and ozonation, but these technologies are expensive and inefficient to remove. Photocatalytic membrane reactor is one of the promising technologies that can address this need. In this research work, we report a successfully developed photocatalytic membrane and reactor system where the photocatalyst is continuously and efficiently recycled. Titanium dioxide (TiO₂) was selected as a photocatalyst for the study, and we fabricated the HFMs by embedding the PVP K90 (polyvinylpyrrolidone) in the Psf membrane. A continuous mode circulation photoreactor was developed. The photocatalytic degradation study was performed for four dyes: methylene blue, methylene orange, crystal violet, and Rhodamine B dye, in three ways: 1. in the presence of UV light and TiO₂, in the presence of only UV light, and 3. in the presence of only TiO₂. It was observed, our developed photoreactor system was able to degrade the dyes (> 99% ) and separate photocatalyst, which also validates that our developed photocatalytic system is working efficiently. For the mineralization test, a TOC study was performed for methylene blue dye (10 ppm), which found 84.4% rejection after 240 min. Reusability of membranes and photocatalyst are also studied. This lab-scale system has shown early success, so we will develop a pilot-scale PMR system to treat large-scale industrial wastewater, bringing a more affordable and efficient system to them while ensuring sustainable security to the nation.