Global demand for membranes is predicted to increase 8.6% per year and the market output can up to $ 26.4 billion in 2019. The reason for rapid growth is the department of government around the world establish much higher standard of purity level for water and wastewater streams. In addition, the growth includes some other reasons like the rising output from main industries such as food, beverages and pharmaceuticals and the greater demand for membranes, which will improve the requirement of high-quality technique of membrane separation. Waste tires are mainly composed of natural rubber (NR), synthetic rubber, carbon black, steel wire and fiber. The valuable resource, rubber, is one of the main raw materials that can be used for membrane preparation. The rubber in the waste tire can be restored to a one-dimensional structure through desulfurization treatment. Therefore, in this project, a novel synthesis technology was developed for recycling waste tire rybber into separation membranes, in order to enhance the value of reclaimed tire rubber as raw material and diverse pathways. In the first year of the project, a dense separation membrane was prepared by hot pressing process and applied to gas separation. The results show that the selectivity of the reclaimed membrane for CO2/N2 separation is up to 12.8 and the CO2 permeability is 161 Barrer. In the second year of the project, ultrafiltration (UF) membranes and nanofiltration (NF) membranes was developed and applied to dye wastewater treatment in dyeing and finishing plants to expand multi-application process. Therefore, two-stage membrane filtration systems for dye removal was developed in the second year project. In the first stage, the MF / UF membrane is used to filter the floc to reach the effluent Standards. In the second stage, the NF membrane is used to further remove the chromaticity of dye to achieve the water recycling purpose. The results indicated that the composition of reclaimed tire rubber on the market in Taiwan is mainly composed of NR and butyl rubber (IIR), which is the main material for synthesis of membranes. The reclaimed rubber with low carbon black content and high degree of desulfurization is more suitable for synthesis of gas separation membrane or UF/NF membrane for dye wastewater treatment. The UF membrane illustrated 86.35% for floc removal and dye rejection. While the RTR-derived NF membranes prepared with 9 wt.% and 3 coating cycles exhibited the best performance of the membranes, with the water flux and methyl blue rejection up to 13.74 LMH and 93.11 % at 0.98 bar, respectively.

Waste tire, Reclaimed rubber, Dip coating, Hollow fiber membrane, Dye removal