What’s Leaching from the Membrane?: ENVR 400 In-house Seminar

Alma Beciragic, doctoral candidate in the Department of Environmental Sciences and Engineering, will present this week’s seminar in the department’s Spring 2019 series. Beciragic’s talk is titled, “The Question Remains: What’s Leaching from the Membrane?”

Learn more here.

Abstract: Increasing potable water demands coupled with the decreased availability of traditional water sources have made pressure driven membrane processes, such as nanofiltration (NF) and reverse osmosis (RO), important alternative water treatment technologies to augment drinking water supplies. Integrated membrane systems (using ultrafiltration (UF)/ microfiltration (MF) followed by RO/NF membrane filtration) have developed to become the industrial standard for potable reuse applications. These systems are renowned for their high treatment efficacy in regards to the removal of salts, metals, endocrine disrupting compounds, pharmaceuticals, personal care products, and other emerging contaminants. Membranes are, however, susceptible to biofouling which can lead to compromised treated water quality. Disinfecting feed water, such as surface water or secondary effluent, prior to the membrane has been the conventional anti-biofouling strategy—chlorination and chloramination being the most widely used by utilities.
Several nanofiltration membranes have been shown to leach unknown compounds into the treated water even when rinsed with over 1000 gallons of water per square meter. Despite the prevalent use of disinfectants in membrane systems, little work has explored the impact of disinfectants on the identity, concentration, and fate of membrane leachates. This seminar will describe some of our studies that address these questions, and in particular identify leachates that react with disinfectants to form regulated and unregulated
chlorinated byproducts.

Please contact Dr. Howard Weinberg, howard_weinberg@unc.edu, if you have any questions.