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Published on: March 1, 2020
Silicic Acid Removal by Metal-Organic Frameworks for Silica-Scale Mitigation in Reverse Osmosis
Rui Guo1,2, Jun Zhang1,2, Taona Nashel Mufanebadza1,2
1Chemical Engineering Research Center, School of Chemical Engineering and Technology, Tianjin University, Tianjin 300072, China.
Abstract:
Reverse osmosis (RO) membranes are susceptible to silica scaling, resulting in irreversible degradation of membrane performance. This work covered the fabrication of MIL-101(Fe) for silicic acid adsorption to alleviate the silica scaling of RO membranes. The effect of pH, mixing time and initial concentration on silicic acid adsorption of MIL-101(Fe) was appraised in detail. The adsorption experiments demonstrated that MIL-101(Fe) possessed an excellent adsorption ability for silicic acid with the maximum adsorption capacity reaching 220.1 mgSiO2·g-1. Data fitting confirmed the pseudo-second-order equation and Freundlich equation were consistent with silicic acid adsorption on MIL-101(Fe). Finally, a simulated anti-scaling experiment was carried out using a feed solution pretreated by MIL-101(Fe) adsorption, and the permeance exhibited a much lower decline after 24 h filtration, confirming that MIL-101(Fe) exhibits an excellent application potential for silica-scale mitigation in RO systems.
