Abstract
As insufficient access to clean water is expected to become worse in the near future, water purification is becoming increasingly important. Membrane filtration is the most promising technologies to produce clean water from contaminated water. Although there have been many studies to prepare highly water-permeable carbon-based membranes by utilizing frictionless water flow inside the carbonaceous pores, the carbon-based membranes still suffer from several issues, such as high cost and complicated fabrication as well as relatively low salt rejection. Here, we report for the first time the use of microporous carbonaceous membranes via controlled carbonization of polymer membranes with uniform microporosity for high-flux nanofiltration. Further enhancement of membrane performance is observed by O2 plasma treatment. The optimized membrane exhibits high water flux (13.30 LMH Bar−1) and good MgSO4 rejection (77.38%) as well as antifouling properties. This study provides insight into the design of microporous carbonaceous membranes for water purification.
Highlights
Carbon-based membranes have been extensively studied because of their unique characteristics, such as high physicochemical stability, fast mass transport behavior, large surface area, biocidal property, and narrow pore size distribution[1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11]
polymers of intrinsic microporosity (PIMs)-1 was synthesized by polycondensation of 5,5′,6,6′-tetrahydroxy-3,3,3′,3′-tetramethyl-1,1′-spirobisindane (TTSBI) and 2,3,5,6-tetrafluoroterephthalonitrile (TFTPN), as previously reported29,35–37. 1H NMR and elemental analysis (EA) revealed that the polymer was successfully synthesized
A PIM-1 membrane was prepared by a simple solution casting method (Fig. 1a); a solution of PIM-1 in CHCl3 was poured into a glass dish, followed by the slow evaporation of the solvent at room temperature
Summary
Carbon-based membranes have been extensively studied because of their unique characteristics, such as high physicochemical stability, fast mass transport behavior, large surface area, biocidal property, and narrow pore size distribution[1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11]. C-PIM-1 membrane shows smaller water contact angle and higher water wettability than PIM-1 membrane possibly due to its graphitic carbon structure[49] and rough surface morphology[50,51], as presented in the Raman spectroscopy and AFM results, respectively (Figs 1d and S5, Supplementary Information).
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