Removal of high concentration Congo red by hydrophobic PVDF hollow fiber composite membrane coated with a loose and porous ZIF-71PVDF layer through vacuum membrane distillation

Although membrane distillation (MD) technology has the outstanding advantages of almost 100% solute retention and mild operation conditions, its further development is limited by low permeate flux. In order to solve the problem, the improvement of membrane hydrophobicity becomes one of the effective solutions. In this study, a loose and porous hydrophobic zeolitic imidazolate frameworks-71 (ZIF-71)/polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) coating layer was composited on the outside surface of PVDF hollow fiber support membrane by the dilute solution coating to enhance membrane hydrophobicity. The prepared hollow fiber composite (HFC) membranes were employed to remove high concentration Congo red (CR) through VMD. The effects of different operation conditions including the dye concentration, feed temperature, vacuum pressure and feed flow rate on CR rejection and permeate water flux were investigated. In the variation range of operating conditions, all the CR rejection of the PVDF HFC membranes shows a slight change and remains above 99.9%. Under the optimal operation conditions including dye concentration 600 mg·L ⁻¹ , vacuum pressure 31.325 kPa, feed temperature 60°C and feed flow rate 50 L·h ⁻¹ , HFC membrane exhibit a permeate water flux of 13.15 kg·m ⁻² ·h ⁻¹ . HFC membrane suffers dye fouling during the continuous dye filtration for 100 h. The fouling mechanism was proposed and a combined cleaning way including forward washing, back flushing and chemical desorption has been proved to be effective in recovering membrane water flux.