Abstract
In order to develop a high-performance thin-film nanocomposite (TFN) nanofiltration (NF) membrane, the functionalized graphene-based nanomaterial (GO-HBE-COOH) was synthesized by combining two-dimensional graphene oxide (GO) with a three-dimensional hyperbranched polymer, which was used as the novel nanofiller and successfully embedded into the polypiperazine-amide (PPA) active layers on polysulfone (PSU) substrates via interfacial polymerization (IP) process. The resultant NF membranes were characterized using ATR-FTIR, SEM, and AFM, while their performance was evaluated in terms of water flux, salt rejection, antifouling ability, and chlorine resistance. The influence of GO-HBE-COOH concentration on the morphologies, properties, and performance of TFN NF membranes was investigated. With the addition of 60 ppm GO-HBE-COOH, the TFN-GHC-60 NF membrane exhibited the optimal water flux without a sacrifice of the salt rejection. It was found that the introduction of GO-HBE-COOH nanosheets favored the formation of a thinner and smoother nanocomposite active layer with an enhanced hydrophilicity and negative charge. As a result, TFN NF membranes demonstrated a superior permeaselectivity, antifouling ability, and chlorine resistance over the conventional PPA thin-film composite (TFC) membranes.
Highlights
Pressure-driven membrane separation technology with a selectively permeable membrane belongs to a kind of physical separation process, which has the advantages of high efficiency, energy saving ability, modular design, friendliness to the environment, and so on
Thin-film nanocomposite (TFN) NF membranes incorporating an appropriate amount of graphene oxide (GO) nanosheets into the top active layer and/or the porous support layer have demonstrated a superior performance over the traditional PA-thin-film composite (TFC) NF membranes [3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10]
In order to make use of 2D graphene-based nanomaterials and 3D Hyperbranched polymers (HBPs) in this study, GO was firstly modified with hydroxyl-terminated hyperbranched polyester (HPE) to synthesize HPE functionalized GO (GO-HPE), and GO-HPE was further reacted with succinic anhydride to obtain GO-HPE-COOH containing a large number of hydrophilic carboxyl groups
Summary
Quanling Xie 1,3, * , Shishen Zhang 1,2 , Hanjun Ma 1,2 , Wenyao Shao 2, *, Xiao Gong 2 and. Fujian Collaborative Innovation Center for Exploitation and Utilization of Marine Biological Resources, Xiamen 361005, China. Received: 22 October 2018; Accepted: 8 November 2018; Published: 12 November 2018
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