CAS Key Laboratory of Urban Pollutant Conversion, Department of Chemistry, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, 230026, China.
CAS Key Laboratory of Urban Pollutant Conversion, Department of Chemistry, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, 230026, China; School of Metallurgy and Environment, Central South University, Changsha, 410083, China.
Water Res. 2018 Nov 15;145:146-152. doi: 10.1016/j.watres.2018.08.019. Epub 2018 Aug 8.
Membrane fouling remains a major challenge for applying membrane technology to water treatment and, therefore, new tools to recognize the key foulants are essential for characterizing and evaluating the membrane fouling process. In this work, fluorescence excitation emission matrix coupled with parallel factor framework-clustering analysis was used to investigate the membrane fouling during the filtration process of humic acid (HA) and bovine serum albumin (BSA) solution by polyvinylidene fluoride membrane. Interestingly, the interaction between BSA and HA in the membrane fouling process was observed, and was further confirmed by infrared microspectroscopy and two-dimensional correlation spectroscopic analysis. In addition, the HA-induced membrane fouling was observed to be initially relieved, but became aggravated when a certain amount of BSA was added. Furthermore, with such an integrated approach, the OH groups in HA and amide bands in BSA were found to be mainly responsible for the membrane fouling and the HA-BSA interaction was mainly caused by the encapsulation of BSA with HA. This work develops a new method for probing membrane fouling and demonstrates the interaction between membrane foulants and its roles in membrane fouling process. Furthermore, the integrated approach developed in this work has a potential to explore other types of interfacial interactions.
膜污染仍然是将膜技术应用于水处理的主要挑战，因此，识别关键污染物的新工具对于膜污染过程的特征描述和评估至关重要。在这项工作中，荧光激发发射矩阵结合平行因子框架聚类分析用于研究腐殖酸（HA）和牛血清白蛋白（BSA）溶液通过聚偏氟乙烯膜过滤过程中的膜污染。有趣的是，观察到了 BSA 和 HA 在膜污染过程中的相互作用，并通过红外微光谱和二维相关光谱分析进一步证实了这一点。此外，观察到 HA 引起的膜污染最初得到缓解，但当添加一定量的 BSA 时，膜污染加剧。此外，通过这种综合方法，发现 HA 中的 OH 基团和 BSA 中的酰胺带主要导致膜污染，而 HA-BSA 相互作用主要是由 HA 包裹 BSA 引起的。这项工作开发了一种探测膜污染的新方法，并证明了膜污染物之间的相互作用及其在膜污染过程中的作用。此外，本工作中开发的综合方法具有探索其他类型界面相互作用的潜力。
