Advanced treatment of textile dyeing secondary effluent using magnetic anion exchange resin and its effect on organic fouling in subsequent RO membrane

Strict regulations are forcing dyeing factory to upgrade existing waste treatment system. In this study, advanced treatment of dyeing secondary effluent by magnetic anion exchange resin (NDMP) was investigated and compared with ultrafiltration (UF); NDMP as a pre-treatment of reverse osmosis (RO) was also studied. NDMP resin (20 mL/L) gave higher removal of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) (83.9%) and colority (94.9%) than UF with a cut-off of 10 kDa (only 48.6% and 44.1%, respectively), showing that NDMP treatment was effective to meet the stringent discharge limit of DOC and colority. Besides, NDMP resin (20 mL/L) as a pretreatment of RO increased the permeate flux by 12.5% and reduced irreversible membrane fouling by 6.6%, but UF pretreatment did not mitigate RO membrane fouling. The results of excitation-emission matrix fluorescence spectra and resin fractions showed that NDMP had more efficient removal than UF for transphilic acid and hydrophilic fraction, such as protein-like organic matters and soluble microbial products, which contributed to a significant proportion of RO membrane fouling. In sum, NDMP resin treatment not only gave effective removal of DOC and colority of dyeing secondary effluent, but exhibited some improvement for RO membrane flux and irreversible fouling.