Performance Evaluation of Nanofiltration and Reverse Osmosis Membranes for Atrazine Removal from Water

Pesticide contamination from agricultural activities has become a growing environmental concern since pesticides can migrate across environmental compartments and accumulate on undesirable surfaces and in water bodies. Given their high toxicity to living organisms and resistance to degradation, developing effective removal strategies is essential. This study investigates the removal of pesticide atrazine from a binary solution using commercially available nanofiltration (NF) and reverse osmosis (RO) membranes, with molecular weight cut-offs of 150–300 Da and 100–200 Da, respectively. The experimental study was conducted in a laboratory-scale RO/NF system with six cells connected in parallel over a duration of 3 h. Removal efficiency was determined by analysing all samples (feed and permeate) using liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry. The results showed that the atrazine removal efficiency ranged from 16.0 to 84.9 % with NF membranes, and from 64.0 to 93.1 % with RO membranes, indicating that size exclusion was the main removal mechanism.