Research Information System
ENVIRONMENTAL CHEMISTRY LETTERS, vol.16, no.2, pp.553-559, 2018 (SCI-Expanded)
Water scarcity arises rapidly with increasing human population, urbanization and industrialization. Therefore, water production from natural sources using efficient and environmental friendly technologies is gaining attention. Pervaporative desalination is a promising technology based upon membrane filtration. Here, we fabricated and tested a novel hybrid-composite membrane: polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF)/polyvinyl pyrrolidone/(PVP)/3A zeolite. Desalination performance was evaluated in terms of flux, salt rejection, zeolite incorporation within the membrane and temperature. Results show that all membranes exhibited salt rejection higher than 99.5%. The highest flux of 2.5 kg m(-2) h(-1) and salt rejection of 99.9% were obtained using 10 wt% 3A incorporated PVDF/PVP membrane at 40 A degrees C. The PVDF/PVP/3A zeolite membrane preserved its stability during 55-h desalination operating without performance decline.