Mercury Removal from Wastewater Using Cysteamine Functionalized Membranes
Md. Saiful Islam, Ronald J. Vogler, Sayed Mohammad Abdullah Al Hasnine, Sebastián Hernández, Nga Malekzadeh, Thomas P. Hoelen, Evan S. Hatakeyama, Dibakar Bhattacharyya
Abstract
cations reduced the adsorption efficiencies to 82% for the CysM membrane and to 40% for the Cys membrane. The inferior performance of Cys membranes may be explained by the presence of a carboxyl (-COOH) functional group in Cys, which may interfere in the adsorption process in the presence of multiple cations because of multication absorption. CysM membranes may therefore be more effective for treatment of wastewater than Cys membranes. Focused ion beam characterization of a CysM membrane cross section demonstrates that the adsorption of heavy metals is not limited to the membrane surface but takes place across the entire pore length. Experimental results for adsorptions of selected heavy metals on thiol membranes over a wide range of operating conditions could be predicted with modeling. These results show promising potential industrial applications of thiol-functionalized membranes.