Utilization of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic bottle waste as membrane with several modifications for the removal of chromium ions in wastewater

The increasing demand for products that use the electroplating process has caused the growth of the electroplating industry in various countries to increase. This growth was followed by an increase in the amount of toxic and hazardous chromium waste in the water. Continuous technology development is needed to overcome these problems. One of the technologies that has been developed until now is membrane technology. On the other hand, plastic bottle waste, which increases every year (381.73 million tons), has the property of forming films or thin layers. Therefore, the use of plastic bottle waste into a low-cost, sustainable, and environmentally friendly membrane material has great potential. In this study, the immersion-precipitation phase inversion method was used in the membrane preparation process by modifying fillers (zeolite NaY) to improve membrane performance. Determination of fillers was studied. Furthermore, the fabricated membranes were tested for their performance in chromium ion contamination in wastewater. The results showed that the PET-W membrane could produce a water flux of 292.74 Lm^-2h^-1bar^-1and a chromium ion flux of 544.94 Lm^-2h^-1bar^-1. The addition of zeolite NaY increased the percent removal from PET-W membrane to 10 times (from 4.07 to 47.8).