Simultaneous membrane fouling mitigation and emerging pollutant benzophenone-3 removal by electro-peroxone process

Abstract In this work, the effects of electro-peroxone (E-peroxone, i.e. combination of ozonation and electrolysis using a carbon based cathode) assistance on microfiltration (MF) was systematically investigated from the performance and mechanism viewpoints. Results show that E-peroxone oxidation exhibited better ability than individual processes in membrane fouling mitigation when using bovine serum albumin (BSA), humic acid (HA) and silicon dioxide (SiO 2 ) particles as model foulants. The relative fluxes at 250 s E-peroxone assisted MF treatment were determined to be ∼0.30-0.71, which are >15% higher than those in single ozonation or electrolysis assisted MF process. The efficiency of E-peroxone process in membrane fouling reduction was positively correlated with the applied voltage (0-4 V) and inlet ozone concentration (0-48.6 mg/L). The experimental data combined with three-dimensional excitation-emission matrix fluorescence spectra (3D EMMs) analysis indicate that simultaneous fouling mitigation and emerging pollutant benzophenone-3 (BP3) removal could be obtained during actual river water treatment. Furthermore, the comparison tests reveal that generation of hydroxyl radicals (HO•) via enhanced O 3 /H 2 O 2 decomposition had a significant role on the organic contaminant degradation and membrane fouling mitigation in E-peroxone assisted MF process, and the introduced electrostatic repulsion force could also contribute to the fouling reduction. These observations suggest that E-peroxone maybe a feasible assistive method for membrane filtration water treatment.