Chidichimo, F.; Basile, M.R.; Conidi, C.; De Filpo, G.; Morelli, R.; Cassano, A. A New Approach for Bioremediation of Olive Mill Wastewaters: Combination of Straw Filtration and Nanofiltration. Membranes2024, 14, 38.
Chidichimo, F.; Basile, M.R.; Conidi, C.; De Filpo, G.; Morelli, R.; Cassano, A. A New Approach for Bioremediation of Olive Mill Wastewaters: Combination of Straw Filtration and Nanofiltration. Membranes 2024, 14, 38.
Chidichimo, F.; Basile, M.R.; Conidi, C.; De Filpo, G.; Morelli, R.; Cassano, A. A New Approach for Bioremediation of Olive Mill Wastewaters: Combination of Straw Filtration and Nanofiltration. Membranes2024, 14, 38.
Chidichimo, F.; Basile, M.R.; Conidi, C.; De Filpo, G.; Morelli, R.; Cassano, A. A New Approach for Bioremediation of Olive Mill Wastewaters: Combination of Straw Filtration and Nanofiltration. Membranes 2024, 14, 38.
Abstract
A combination of straw filtration and nanofiltration was investigated for the first time as a sus-tainable approach aimed at valorizing olive mills wastewaters (OMWs) within a circular economy strategy. Ground straw filters with different granulometry (120, 250 and 500 m) were tested in the first step to clarify the raw wastewater. The 500m filter offered the best performance due to a lower exposed surface of the filtering fibers and a shorter filtering time allowing to reduce about 70% of the COD of the raw wastewater. Three different commercial membranes in flat-sheet con-figuration with molecular weight cut-off (MWCO) in the range 150-500 Da were tested to frac-tionate the clarified wastewater according to a dead-end configuration. Among the investigated membranes the NFA-12A membrane exhibited the highest productivity in selected operating conditions (steady-state values of 11.4 L/m2h at 20 bar and 24 ± 2 °C). In addition, flux decays for this membrane resulted lower than the other two tested membranes indicating a lower propensity to fouling phenomena. Higher rejections towards total polyphenols and TAA (76.6% and 73.2%, respectively) were also observed for this membrane. Flavanols and hydroxycinnamic acids were retained for more than 99%. The combination of straw filtration and NF with NFA-12A membrane allowed to reduce the COD of raw OMWs up to 97.6%. The retentate fraction of this membrane exhibited a TAA of 18.9 ± 0.7 mM Trolox supporting its propensity for the development of inno-vative formulations of interest in food and nutraceutical applications.
Environmental and Earth Sciences, Waste Management and Disposal
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
,
,
,
,
,
*
