Dialysis used to treat high-salinity organic wastewater

For patients with kidney failure, dialysis uses a dialyzer to filter waste and excess fluid from the blood, which is drawn from the body, cleansed in the dialyzer then returned through a separate needle or tube.

In a new study published in Nature Water, the team at Rice University, Texas, in collaboration with Guangdong University of Technology, China, found that mimicking this same method can separate salts from organic substances with minimal dilution of the wastewater. This novel pathway is claimed to have the potential to reduce environmental impacts, lower costs and enable the recovery of valuable resources across a range of industrial sectors.

“Dialysis was astonishingly effective in separating the salts from the organics in our trials,” Professor Menachem Elimelech, a corresponding author on the study, said in a statement. “It’s an exciting discovery with the potential to redefine how we handle some of our most intractable wastewater challenges.”

Industries that generate high-salinity organic wastewaters include petrochemical, pharmaceutical and textile manufacturers.