Development of polymethacrylate-based tangential flow filtration system for waste water treatment
What really drives the project?
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The need to do wastewater reclamation as water is an important yet finite resources. According to the fact sheet released by World health Organization:
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In 2015, 71% of the global population (5.2 billion people) used a safely managed drinking-water service – that is, one located on premises, available when needed, and free from contamination.
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89% of the global population (6.5 billion people) used at least a basic service. A basic service is an improved drinking-water source within a round trip of 30 minutes to collect water.
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844 million people lack even a basic drinking-water service, including 159 million people who are dependent on surface water.
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Globally, at least 2 billion people use a drinking water source contaminated with faeces.
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Contaminated water can transmit diseases such diarrhoea, cholera, dysentery, typhoid, and polio. Contaminated drinking water is estimated to cause 502 000 diarrhoeal deaths each year.
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By 2025, half of the world’s population will be living in water-stressed areas.
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In low- and middle-income countries, 38% of health care facilities lack an improved water source, 19% do not have improved sanitation, and 35% lack water and soap for handwashing.
Source: http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs391/en/ accessed on 26/3/2018
With water reclamation problem to solve, the project embarks on a mission to combine 2 technologies into one dynamic filtration system. One is the polymethacrylate monolith and the other one is the tangential flow filtration (TFF) system. A polymethacrylate monolith was choosen due to it being a highly porous material with interconnected pores that have wide range of pH value resistance, can be functionalized, simple to synthesize and having pore sizes that can be easily tailored depending on its applications. A TFF system on the other hand works better than the traditional dead end filtration system that it is less susceptible to clogging and enables longer operation times. This is because the feed flow tangentially across the filter membrane and any filter cake formed will be washed away during the filtration. Both technologies has been successfully combined and tested to filter wastewater.
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A monolith synthesized in the lab.
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A simple tangential flow filtration system.
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Common wastewater treatment process.
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A working prototype produced.
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