Impact of graphene oxide embedded polyethersulfone membranes for the effective treatment of distillery effluent

In the present study, treatment of spent wash from distilleries was studied using graphene oxide (GO) flakes incorporated in polyethersulfone (PES) mixed matrix membranes (MMMs). Two different additives such as polyacrylic acid (PAA) and lithium chloride (LiCl) were also used separately in the casting dope solution of PES/GO. GO TEM analysis revealed that particles are wrinkled sheets-like multilayer structure. Multilayer structures exhibit better intercalate with polymer matrix to produce hybrid nanocomposite membranes. The TGA analysis has shown that GO has good miscibility in PES membrane. Water flux has been improved progressively for the additive combined GO incorporated PES MMMs. Further, contact angle value of the neat PES membrane showed 70.8° which was significantly reduced up to 58.4° for PES/GO/PAA membrane. This ensures that membrane surface hydrophilicity was improved considerably due to the existence of both groups, GO and PAA. Moreover, the membrane performance was evaluated in terms of permeate flux, flux recovery ratio and color removal efficiency for synthetic melanoidin solution as well as distillery spent wash effluent. A maximum of 54% color removal was observed for distillery spent wash effluent.