Physicochemical Properties and Photodegradation and Separation Performance of Translucent Hollow Fiber Polyvinylidene Fluoride: Effect of Hydrophilic Surface Modifying Macromolecules Loading

Oil produced water (OPW) is a significant waste product of oil and gas industry, with varying composition depending on location and age. Although membrane separation is effective for treating OPW, its susceptibility to severe fouling and limited options for addressing fouling require urgent technological advancements. To address this challenge, present study successfully designed a novel membrane material that exhibits promising potential. Translucent hollow fiber polyvinylidene fluoride (T-PVDF) photocatalytic membrane was fabricated. Hollow nanofiber graphitic carbon nitride (HCN) was immobilized into the T-PVDF membrane via blending method. Hydrophilic surface modifying macromolecules (LSMM) at 0.25 wt. %, 0.50 wt. % and 0.75 wt. % loading helped producing non-delaminated T-PVDF photocatalytic membrane by adjusting the dispersion HCN in the membrane structure. The translucency of LSMM membranes were recorded more than 80° where the translucency decreases upon increase in loading of LSMM owing to the nature of LSMM which resulted in the degradation efficiency of the immobilized HCN to 90.0%. Owing to its non-delaminated morphology, the pure water flux (PWF), permeate flux (PF) and rejection with and without visible light irradiation is high. Among the LSMM membranes, T2-PVDF membrane showed the best performance with 770 L.m-2.h, 520 L.m-2.h and 97% for PWF, PF and rejection without visible light irradiation, respectively. Under visible light irradiation, the PWF, PF and rejection for the similar membrane has increased and recorded to be 890 L.m-2.h, 850 L.m-2.h and 99.0%, respectively. The findings concludes that translucency and membrane morphology are important factors in achieving effective membrane performance and photodegradation.