Higher Acid Recovery Efficiency of Novel Functionalized Inorganic/Organic Composite Anion Exchange Membranes from Acidic Wastewater

Muhammad Imran Khan; Abdallah Shanableh; Noureddine Elboughdiri; Karim Kriaa; Djamel Ghernaout; Saad Ghareba; Majeda Khraisheh; Mushtaq Hussain Lashari

doi:10.3390/membranes11020133

Higher Acid Recovery Efficiency of Novel Functionalized Inorganic/Organic Composite Anion Exchange Membranes from Acidic Wastewater

Membranes (Basel). 2021 Feb 14;11(2):133. doi: 10.3390/membranes11020133.

Authors

Muhammad Imran Khan¹, Abdallah Shanableh¹, Noureddine Elboughdiri^{2

3}, Karim Kriaa^{3

4}, Djamel Ghernaout^{2

5}, Saad Ghareba^{2

6}, Majeda Khraisheh⁷, Mushtaq Hussain Lashari⁸

Affiliations

¹ Research Institute of Sciences and Engineering, University of Sharjah, Sharjah 27272, United Arab Emirates.
² Chemical Engineering Department, College of Engineering, University of Ha'il, P.O. Box 2440, Ha'il 81441, Saudi Arabia.
³ Chemical Engineering Process Department, National School of Engineering Gabes, University of Gabes, Gabes 6011, Tunisia.
⁴ Chemical Engineering Department, College of Engineering, Al Imam Mohammad Ibn Saud Islamic University, Riyadh 11432, Saudi Arabia.
⁵ Chemical Engineering Department, Faculty of Engineering, University of Blida, P.O. Box 270, Blida 09000, Algeria.
⁶ Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering, ElMergib University, Alkhums 40414, Libya.
⁷ Department of Chemical Engineering, College of Engineering, Qatar University, Doha 2713, Qatar.
⁸ Department of Zoology, The Islamia University of Bahawalpur, Bahawalpur 63100, Pakistan.

Abstract

In this work, the synthesis of a series of the functionalized inorganic/organic composite anion exchange membranes (AEMs) was carried out by employing the varying amount of inorganic filler consist of N-(trimethoxysilylpropyl)-N,N,N-trimethylammonium chloride (TMSP-TMA⁺Cl^-) into the quaternized poly (2, 6-dimethyl-1, 4-phenylene oxide) (QPPO) matrix for acid recovery via diffusion dialysis (DD) process. Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy clearly demonstrated the fabrication of the functionalized inorganic/organic composite AEMs and the subsequent membrane characteristic measurements such as ion exchange capacity (IEC), linear swelling ratio (LSR), and water uptake (W_R) gave us the optimum loading condition of the filler without undesirable filler particle aggregation. These composite AEMs exhibited IEC of 2.18 to 2.29 meq/g, LSR of 13.33 to 18.52%, and W_R of 46.11 to 81.66% with sufficient thermal, chemical, and mechanical stability. The diffusion dialysis (DD) test for acid recovery from artificial acid wastewater of HCl/FeCl₂ showed high acid DD coefficient (U_H⁺) (0.022 to 0.025 m/h) and high separation factor (S) (139-260) compared with the commercial membrane. Furthermore, the developed AEMs was acceptably stable (weight loss < 20%) in the acid wastewater at 60 °C as an accelerated severe condition for 2 weeks. These results clearly indicated that the developed AEMs have sufficient potential for acid recovery application by DD process.

Keywords: acid recovery; composite AEM; diffusion dialysis; inorganic filler; ion exchange capacity; separation factor.