Novel Direct Hollow Fiber Nanofiltration Membrane and Its Applications

Abstract

Contamination of portable water source with organic micropollutants (OMP) has increasingly been recognized as potential risk for the human health. Such contaminants include pesticide, herbicide, medicines, PFAS (per – and polyfluoroalkyl substance) and so on. These organic micropollutants as well as natural organic matter (NOM), humic acid in particular, which can act as trihalomethane precursor, could be removed by conventional spiral wound nanofiltration (NF) technology, however, it often requires extensive pretreatment, thus had to increase greenhouse gas emission in the entire treatment process while solving human health issue. In order to address this contradiction, hollow fiber direct nanofiltration (dNF) technology has been developed. The technology has been used for various applications all over the world, which include color and OMP removal from the surface waters. These case studies are discussed in this paper together with key features of the dNF membrane technology.