Heavy metal removal by membrane filtration: article

The heavy metals ate the bad things that exist in water and may affect the ecosystem for the long term effect. One of the dangerous of the heavy metal is mercury that can cause paralysis, blindness and chromosome breakage due to central nervous that has been attacked by the mercury. Various method has been introduced to remove these heavy metals. The methods are liquid-liquid extraction, precipitation and membrane separation technology. The membrane separation is better compared to the other method as it has lower power consumption, smaller footprint, lower pressure drop and high efficiency. Chitosan is a well-known polymer as it is one of the most available biopolymer in nature. The membrane can be enhanced as it is combine with the suitable polymer and can be well-known as hybrid membrane. Polyvinyl alcohol is suitable to be combine with chitosan as both are extensively use to enhance the properties of chitosan in both mechanical and chemical. The membrane is improvised as it is coating with the hybrid membrane consist of polyvinyl alcohol and chitosan. Then, the hybrid membrane will be examined their characteristics by FTIR and TGA analysis. The hybrid membrane will undergo three performance testing. The performance testing are water flux, antifouling and mercury removal. Therefore, the objective of this study is to study the effect of various concentration of polyvinyl alcohol, PVA on the properties of the membrane and the performance of the hybrid membrane on mercury removal.