• Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.363-375
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• 2019

Micellar-enhanced ultrafiltration (MEUF) is a surfactant-based separation technique and has been investigated for the removal of heavy metals from wastewater. The performance of heavy metals removal from wastewater through MEUF relies on membrane characteristics, surfactant properties, various operational parameters including operating pressure, surfactant and heavy metal concentration, pH of the solution, temperature, and presence of dissolved solutes and salts. This study presents an overview of literature related to MEUF with respect to the all significant parameters including membranes, surfactants, operating conditions and MEUF hybrid processes. Moreover, this study illustrates that MEUF is an adaptable technique in various applications. Nowadays water contamination caused by heavy metals has become a serious concern around the globe. MEUF is a significant separation technique in wastewater treatment that should be acknowledged, for the reason that removal of heavy metals contamination even at lower concentrations becomes achievable, which is evidently made known in the presented review. Hybrid processes presented the better results as compared to MEUF. Future studies are required to continue the experimental work with various combinations of surfactant and heavy metals, and to investigate for the treatment of concentrated solutions, as well as for real industrial wastewater.

• Journal of Soil and Groundwater Environment
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.30-36
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• 2003

The effect of humic acid on the simultaneous removal of nitrate and phosphate was investigated in a micellar-enhanced ultrafiltration (MEUF). At the low molar ratio of cetylpyridinium chloride (CPC) to contaminants, the removal of nitrate was lower to 50％ by 100 ppm of humic acid due to the competition for binding on micelles. At the molar ratio higher than 3, however, the removal of nitrate was over 80％. Phosphate was removed over 80% at the molar ratio higher than 1. The CPC and humic acid were rejected over 99 ％ by UF membrane. The flux did not decrease by 100 ppm of humic acid but rather slightly increased since the humic acid adsorbed on the membrane made the membrane more hydrophilic. As a result, humic acid did not diminish the performance of MEUF in the simultaneous removal of nitrate and phosphate.

• Membrane and Water Treatment
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• v.9 no.5
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• pp.335-342
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• 2018

Micelle-Enhanced Ultrafiltration (MEUF) is a membrane separation processes that improving ultrafiltration process with the formation of micelles of the surface active agents. Surface active agents are widely used to improve membrane processes due to the ability to trap organic compounds and metals in the treatment of industrial waste water. In this study, surface active agents are used to improve micelle-enhanced ultrafiltration (MEUF) to reduce chemical oxygen demand (COD), total dissolved solid (TDS), turbidity and clogging the membrane in dairy wastewater treatment. Three important operational factors (anionic surface active agent concentration, pressure and pH) and these interactions were investigated by using response surface methodology (RSM) and Box-Behnken design. Results show that due to the concentration polarization layer and increase the number of Micelles; the anionic surface active agent concentration has a negative effect on the flux and has a positive effect on the elimination of contamination indices. pH, and the pressure have the greatest effect on flux. On the other hand, it could be stated that these percentages of separation are in the percentages range of Nano-filtration (NF). While MEUF process has higher flux than NF process. The results have been achieved at lower pressure while NF process needs high pressure, thus making MEUF is the replacement for the NF process.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Soil and Groundwater Environment Conference
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• 2003.09a
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• pp.413-416
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• 2003

Micellar enhanced ultrafiltration(MEUF) is a surfactant-based separtaion technique which can remove dissolved organics or multivalent ions from water. In this study, trichloroethylene(TCE) and chromate were simultaneouly removed using MEUF and cetyltrimethylammoniun chloride (CPC) was used as a surfactant. The removal efficiency of chromate was 99% and that of TCE was more than 80%. The presence of TCE or chromate did not affect removal efficiency of each pollutants because the predominat mechanism of TCE and chromate are different.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• v.52 no.6
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• pp.775-780
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• 2014

Micellar enhanced ultrafiltration (MEUF) was used to remove cadmium from an aqueous solution using sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) as a surfactant. Operational parameters such as initial permeate flux, retentate pressure, initial cadmium concentration, pH solution, molecular weight cut-off (MWCO), and molar ratio of cadmium to SDS were investigated. Removal efficiency of cadmium from an aqueous solution increased with an increase of retentate pressure, pH solution and molar ratio of cadmium to SDS, and decreased with an increase of initial permeate flux. Higher removal efficiency of cadmium from the aqueous solution was achieved using lower MWCO (smaller membrane pore size). Under optimized experimental condition, cadmium removal efficiency reached 74.6 % within an hour. Using MEUF-ACF hybrid process the removal efficiency of both cadmium and SDS was found to be over 90%.

• Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.98-104
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• 2008

In this study, chromate and cetylperidinium chloride (CPC) removal from artificial wastewater was monitored by using micellar enhanced ultrafiltration (MEUF) and activated carbon fibre (ACF) adsorption hybrid processes. For the efficient chromate removal, molar concentration of the CPC should be five times that of chromate and it should be at least one critical micelle concentration (CMC). The MEUF was found to be effective in the chromate removal while ACF in the CPC adsorption to produce chromate and CPC free effluents. The chromate and CPC removal was 99.8% from MEUF-ACF process. Effluent chromate concentration was exponentially correlated with molar ratio of CPC to chromate and pH.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Soil and Groundwater Environment Conference
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• 2002.09a
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• pp.306-309
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• 2002

Micellar-enhanced ultrafiltration was investigated to remediate groundwater contaminated with chromate using a cationic surfactant, cetylpyridinium chloride (CPC). Removal of chromate was expressed as a function of molar ratio of CPC to chromate. With 10 molar ratio of CPC, removal efficiency of chromate was reached to over 99%. The rejection of CPC was 90% at 1 molar ratio, gradually increased as the molar ratio increased.

• Journal of Soil and Groundwater Environment
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.36-43
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• 2003

Feasibility of micellar-enhanced ultrafiltration far the removal of nitrate was investigated using cationic surfactants, cetylpyridinium chloride and octadecylamine acetate. The removal of nitrate increased as the molar ratio of surfactant increased. With the molar ratio of 3, at least 80% of nitrate was removed, while > 98% of nitrate was removed at the surfactant molar ratio of 10. Octadecylamine acetate showed higher removal efficiency of nitrate and higher rejection of surfactant than cetylpyridinium chloride because of the accessibility of nitrate to surfactant micelles due to head group of surfactant. Octadecylamine acetate turned out to be a better surfactant than cetylpyridinium chloride for micellar-enhanced ultrafiltration to remove nitrate from groundwater.

• Proceedings of the Membrane Society of Korea Conference
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• 1998.04a
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• pp.83-86
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• 1998

1. Introduction : Low molecular harmful organics such as 1-naphthol and phenol are widely used in industries, and pose serious environmental problems. Wastewater containing low molecular harmful organics may be ejected from various sources including metal-plating industries, circuit-board manufacturing process, photographic and photo-processing industries, refineries and metal-tailing leachate. The pollution of nation harbors, waterways and ground water resources with these organics has reached critical portions, and might also give hazardous influence on human health. Micellar enhanced ultrafiltration(MEUF) is a recently developed process to remove dissolved organics and/or heavy metals present in small or trace quantities from aqueous solution. In this system, the fatal defect is leakage of surfactants especially at low concentration below CMC(critical micelle concentration), which becomes a secondary pollution. Our group proposed to use biosurfactant and polymeric micelle to solve problems mentioned above. In this study we investigated a modified MEUF using PEO-PPO-PEO (polyethyleneoxide-polypropyleneoxide-polyethyleneoxide) block copolymers for the removal of organic solutes such as 1-naphthol and phenol from aqueous wastewater. We proposed PEO-PPO-PEO block copolymers as new surfactants for forming micelles in MEUF, and investigated the solubilization characteristics and efficiency for the removal of 1-naphthol and phenol. PEO-PPO-PEO block copolymers are, environmentally mild and safe as biosurfactants.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Soil and Groundwater Environment Conference
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• 2002.04a
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• pp.334-337
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• 2002

The drinking water industry faces a growing number of difficultiesin the treatment of groundwater for drinking water production. Groundwater sources are frequently contaminated with nitrates and phosphates due to usage of chemical fertilizer In this study, feasibility of micellar enhanced ultrafiltation (MEUF) was investigated to remediate groundwater contaminated with nitrate and phosphate. Ultrafiltration membrane was cellulose acetate with molecular weight cut off (MWCO) 10,000 and celtyl pyridinium chloride (CPC) was used to form pollutant-micelle complex with nitrate and phosphate. The results show that nitrate and phosphate rejections are satisfactory. The removal efficiency of nitrate and phosphate show 80% and 84% in single pollutant system, respectively with 3 molar ratio of CPC to pollutants. In the multi-pollutant systems, the removalefficiency increased to 90 % and 89 % for nitrate and phosphate, respectively, The presence of nitrate in the solutions did not affect the removal of phosphate and that of phosphate did not affect the removal of nitrate. The concentration of CPC in the permeate and removal efficiency of CPC was a function of the concentration of CPC in the feed solutions.