Fabrication of zeolite NaX-doped electrospun porous fiber membrane for simultaneous ammonium recovery and organic carbon enrichment

To achieve ammonium recovery and organic matter enrichment simultaneously, a novel zeolite NaX-doped electrospun porous fiber membrane (Z-EPFM) was fabricated by using the electrospinning technique with the addition of polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF), zeolite NaX and polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) as porogen. The strategy of using PVP as a pore-forming agent to obtain porous Z-EPMFs is more efficient to achieve ammonium adsorption than improving the hydrophilicity of the zeolite NaX-doped electrospun fiber membrane (Z-EFM) by simply adding PVP. As the molecular weight and content of PVP increase, the ammonium adsorption efficiency, hydrophilicity and membrane pore size of Z-EPFMs increase, while their mechanical strength decreases, which is due to the formation of pore structures . The most efficient Z-EPFM (zeolite NaX load density of 0.78 mg/cm 2 ) achieved 96.91% ± 0.50% ammonium adsorption efficiency and 95.48% ± 4.52% organic carbon enrichment efficiency, which were maintained steadily over five regeneration cycles. Therefore, the Z-EPFM offered a novel approach for simultaneous ammonium recovery and organic matter enrichment, which could be proposed as an efficient method to regulate energy flow and control nitrogen nutrient in municipal wastewater.