Nanofiltration of uranium-contaminated water – focus on separation mechanisms

Nanofiltration offers new perspectives for the treatment of mine drainage from former uranium mines, e.g. in East Germany. In this study the perfor-mance of various commercial nanofiltration membranes for a real mine water sample was determined experimentally and modelled. Experimental data is key to membrane selection and is necessary to validate modelling results. Mathematical modelling offers deeper insights into the interaction of uranium species with solid surfaces which also has the potential to extrapolate to other research fields.