Wastewaters that are produced by industrial processes are more challenging to treat than municipal wastewaters, primarily due to two reasons. Firstly, industrial wastewaters contain high concentrations of several different contaminants (e.g. metals, nutrients and organics etc.), which can be challenging for a single process to treat. Secondly, the compositional properties of the wastewaters can vary significantly as it is dependent on several upstream processes. Commercial membrane technologies have shown significant adoption in desalination and municipal wastewater treatment applications. Their favourable selectivity and tunable properties have garnered interest from both academia and industry to push these technologies into industrial wastewater treatment. Despite showing promising contaminant removal results, current studies have shown that fouling due to high contaminant loadings, and variable treatment efficacies due to feed property variations, limit the adoption of commercial membranes into these applications. Current research addresses these challenges through the new material development or surface modifications, however, there is a need to approach these challenges at a process level by integrating existing membrane technology into adaptive processes.
This thesis aims to advance the adoption of commercial membrane technology into ‘tough-to-treat’ industrial wastewater applications. Firstly, the effects of high contaminant concentrations and variable feed properties on membrane treatment is studied by using advanced techniques, such as gas chromatography – mass spectrometry, to resolve the composition of feed and permeate streams from membrane processes treating real wastewaters. It was determined that fast and efficient screening tools are required to optimize and adapt membrane processes to respond to this variability. This thesis then introduces high-throughput and miniaturized screening platform that combines analytical centrifugation with filter plate technology to rapidly optimize two-stage coagulation-filtration processes with an extremely low material and time requirement. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / Wastewaters sourced from industrial processes are considered ‘tough-to-treat’ due to high contaminant concentrations and time-varying compositional properties. Recent advancements in membrane technologies have demonstrate great promise in treating industrial wastewaters, however, these membranes often need to be integrated with other treatment technologies to overcome challenges with treating these wastewaters. This thesis aims to push the adoption of integrated membrane processes for treating high-strength industrial wastewaters. By utilizing advanced analytical techniques to investigate the effects of high contaminant loadings and variable feed properties on membrane processes, it was determined that screening tools are needed to rapidly design and optimize membrane process that are tailored to the properties of the wastewater. This thesis introduces a high-throughput and miniaturized screening platform that combines analytical centrifugation and filter-plate technology to holistically screen two-stage coagulation-filtration processes with little time and material requirements.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:mcmaster.ca/oai:macsphere.mcmaster.ca:11375/29735 |
| Date | January 2024 |
| Creators | Premachandra, Abhishek |
| Contributors | Latulippe, David |
| Source Sets | McMaster University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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