Date of Award

5-2025

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science

Degree Discipline

Environmental Engineering

Abstract

Heavy metals released from industrial effluents end up in rivers and oceans. These metals enter the human body through the ecosystem and accumulate, leading to severe health disorders. This study investigated the removal of heavy metals, cadmium (Cd2+) and cobalt (Co2+), using Micellar Enhanced Membrane Filtration (MEMF). MEMF is a surfactant-based membrane separation technique where the addition of a surfactant in wastewater forms micelles. Heavy metals attach to the hydrophilic heads of micelles. The resulting feed solution is subjected to a pressure difference in a filtration system, forcing it through a membrane with a smaller pore size that retains micelle particles and attached contaminants. In this study, sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) served as the surfactant, and flat sheet polyethersulfone (PES) ultrafiltration and microfiltration membranes were used as the filtration medium to separate Cd2+ and Co2+ metal ions from simulated lab water. The experiments involved studying several important parameters, such as examining the removal efficiency of membranes without using SDS, determining the optimum concentration of SDS for Cd2+ and Co2+ removal, and evaluating the performance of the membrane for a longer duration. Other parameters include analyzing the removal efficiency by varying concentrations of metal ions while keeping the SDS dosage constant, examining the effect of pH and electrolyte concentrations on the removal of Cd2+ and Co2+. Several analytical characterizations were performed, such as FT-IR, FE- SEM, etc. The optimum SDS concentration for Cd2+ and Co2+ removal was 1 Critical Micelle Concentration (CMC). Both microfiltration and ultrafiltration membranes showed a removal efficiency above 99% for removing Cd2+ and Co2+ at 1 CMC SDS. The real-time flux of the microfiltration membrane was higher than that of the ultrafiltration membrane. The presence of electrolytes reduced the removal efficiency for Cd2+ and Co2+. The removal efficiency of Cd2+ and Co2+ remained unchanged between pH 3 and 9. The results indicate that MEMF technology effectively removes heavy metals such as Cd2+ and Co2+. Our findings suggest that ultrafiltration and microfiltration membranes, aided by the surfactant SDS, are suitable for eliminating Cd2+, Co2+ ions, and other heavy metals from wastewater.

Index Terms _ Cadmium (Cd2+), cobalt (Co2+), heavy metal removal, micellar-enhanced ultrafiltration, microfiltration, sodium dodecyl sulfate, and wastewater.

Committee Chair/Advisor

Raghava R. Kommalapati

Committee Member

Irvin W. Osborne-Lee

Committee Member

Gururaj Nelgund

Committee Member

Emmanuel U. Nzewi

Publisher

Prairie View A&M University

Rights

© 2021 Prairie View A & M University

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

Date of Digitization

6/25/2025

Contributing Institution

John B Coleman Library

City of Publication

Prairie View

MIME Type

Application/PDF

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Available for download on Friday, June 25, 2027


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