Photocatalytic Degradation of Oil using Polyvinylidene Fluoride/Titanium Dioxide Composite Membrane for Oily Wastewater Treatment

Faculty of Chemical Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Mara, 40500 Shah Alam, Selangor Malaysia

Abstract

Production of industrial wastewater is increasing as the oil and gas industry grows rapidly over the years. The constituents in the industrial wastewater such as organic and inorganic matters, dispersed and lubricant oil and metals which have high toxicity become the major concern to the environment and ecosystem. There are many technologies are being used for oil removal from industrial wastewater. However, there are still needs to find an effective technology to treat oily wastewater before in can be discharge safely to the environment. Membrane technology is an attractive separation technology to treat oily wastewater. The aim of this study is to fabricate polyvinylidene/titanium dioxide (PVDF/TiO₂) composite membrane with further treatment using hot pressed method to enhance the adhesion between TiO₂ with the membrane surfaces. In this study the structural and physical properties of fabricated membrane were conducted using X-ray diffraction (XRD) and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) respectively. The photocatalytic degradation of oil was measured using UV-Vis Spectroscopy. The FTIR results confirmed that, hot pressed PVDF/TiO₂ membrane TiO₂ was successfully deposited onto PVDF membranes surface and XRD results shows that the XRD pattern of PVDF//TiO₂ found that the crystalline structure was remained unchanged after hot pressed. Clear water was obtained after synthetic oily wastewater was exposed to visible light for at least 6 hours. In conclusion, PVDF/TiO₂ composite membrane can be a potential candidate to degrade oil in oily wastewater and suggested to possess an excellent performance if perform simultaneously with membrane separation process.