Developing sustainable and efficient membrane filtration technologies is not only critical for safe drinking water supply but also important for biomass separation for algal biofuel production. Traditional membrane filtration faces major challenges such as polymer aging, membrane fouling, and high costs. This study employed an innovative and multifunctional reactive electrochemical membrane (REM), Ti4O7, to act as a model filtration membrane (see schematics below) that exhibit great antifouling characteristics and strong surface reactivity. The results presented in this work particularly demonstrated the algal integrity changes with exposure to the REM and positive impacts on lipid extraction. The application of a direct current (DC) generated reactive species at the REM surface that could oxidize algae and soluble organic compounds. Algal integrity changes with exposure to the REM included deformation, photosynthetic activity and released intracellular organics. Although the batch results showed a relatively high level of energy consumption to achieve algal destabilization and improved lipid extraction, future reactor optimizations clearly can reduce the energy demand. Moreover, additional benefits of REM such as the reduced membrane fouling potential, reduction of organic (toxic) solvent and energy consumption for downstream lipid processing, and removal of aqueous algal growth inhibitors that enables water and nutrient reuse of algal media may largely offset the associated costs, which deserves more efforts to verify. Our preliminary results clearly lays the groundwork for the sustainable design of innovative REM systems for broader energy and environmental applications such as biomass separation, water, wastewater treatment, pathogen removal, and inactivation.

Algal harvesting and destabilization by Ti4O7 reactive electrochemical membrane

251st National Meeting (2016)

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