INVESTIGADORES
RAJAL veronica Beatriz
congresos y reuniones científicas
Título:
Plasma induced modification of ultrafiltration membranes for viral removal in drinking water treatment.
Autor/es:
MERCEDES L. MÉNDEZ; MERCEDES C. CRUZ; LAURA PALACIO; VERÓNICA B. RAJAL; ELZA CASTRO VIDAURRE; JOSÉ I. CALVO; PEDRO PRÁDANOS
Lugar:
Málaga
Reunión:
Congreso; VI International Conference on Environmental, Industrial, and Applied Microbiology.; 2011
Resumen:
Currently the
plasma treatment is a tool widely used for
surface modification of different materials
to optimize their properties against
a particular application. In the present work,
plasma technique
was used to deposit a layer of hydrophilic polymer on asymmetric
ultrafiltration (UF) membranes. These membranes were synthesized by the phase inversion method. Polyethersulfone
membranes were prepared using several molecular weight (400, 1000, and 10,000
Da) polyethylene glycol as additive, with dimethylacetamide as the solvent and
water as the non-solvent. The membranes synthesized were first subjected to
argon plasma, nonpolymerizable, and then to other plasma atmosphere generated
with argon and vapor of acrylic acid. The aims were to enhance hydrophilicity
and to obtain uniform surface pores of the UF membranes leading to less fouling
and subsequent flux enhancement. The characterization of the membranes before
and after the surface modification was performed by contact angle to determine the effect on the surface hydrophilicity.
Also, Scanning electron microscopy and Atomic force microscopy images allowed
the evaluation of the membrane morphology and Liquid-liquid Displacement
Porosimetry was used to quantify the pore size distributions.
The pure water permeability and tests of retention of the viral model PP7 (phage of Pseudomonas
aeruginosa), were measured showing a good performance.
Finally, the fouling was evaluated by measuring the relative water reduction
(RFR). The membranes modified by plasma had high permeability and smaller RFR
values after filtration with PP7.