Antifouling performance enhancement of polyethersulfone ultrafiltration membrane through increasing charge‐loading capacity over Prussian blue nanoparticles

Abstract

AbstractPrussian blue (PB), as a kind of regulator of charge‐loading capacity, was first used to modify polyethersulfone (PES) membrane, and a novel PB/PES ultrafiltration membrane was prepared by non‐solvent induced phase separation method. The physicochemical properties of PB‐NPs and PB/PES membranes were analyzed by Fourier‐transform infrared spectroscopy, X‐ray diffraction, scanning electron microscope, atomic force microscope, and zeta potential analysis. It was observed that PB‐NPs were uniformly distributed in the PES matrix and a lotus‐seedpod structure was formed inside the membrane. The addition of PB‐NPs improved the charge‐loading capacity of the PES membrane. The permeation and antifouling performance were investigated by filtering bovine serum albumin aqueous solution with different pH values. The results showed that the PB/PES membrane with 0.2‐wt% PB‐NPs content had the excellent antifouling performance and the flux recovery ratio value reached 90.73%. Moreover, the long‐term stability test showed that PB‐NPs did not fall off after continuous pure water filtration, indicating that PB/PES membrane had a good stability.