Antifouling PES/Cu@Fe3O4 mixed matrix membranes: Quantitative structure–activity relationship (QSAR) modeling and wastewater treatment potentiality

Abstract

Innovative mixed matrix membranes were fabricated from blending of both polyethersulfone (PES) and Cu@Fe3O4 core–shell nanostructure (NS) using facile wet phase inversion method. Brunner-Emmett-Teller (BET) surface area, Raman spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction (XRD), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), energy-dispersive x-ray spectroscopy (EDX), and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) analyses of Cu@Fe3O4 NS all confirmed that it was fabricated satisfactorily. Besides, a theoretical model is also constructed for studying the interaction between the proposed compounds. Theoretical results ensure that the feasibility of blending Cu and Fe3O4 with PES polymer, since it is indicating the formation of more reactive structures. This explains their incredible capacity for usage in water/wastewater treatment applications. Resultant data show also the hydrophilic nature of the formed blends agrees with the presented experimental results. Then, the as-prepared membranes were evaluated by attenuated total reflectance-fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (ATR-FTIR), SEM, atomic force microscopy (AFM), contact angle, thermal gravimetric analysis (TGA), and tensile strength techniques. The obtained characterization results demonstrated that the embedding of Cu@Fe3O4 core shell NS inside PES polymer matrix has caused various significant changes on morphology and membrane chemistry. Such changes are reflected in enhancements of both separation and antifouling features due to the porous and hydrophilic nature of Cu@Fe3O4 NS. Furthermore, enhancements in both thermal stability and the mechanical strength (36%) of the modified membrane compared to the bare PES membrane, proving the existence of a strong interaction resulting from hydrogen bonding between hydroxyl group of Cu@Fe3O4 NS and sulfonic group of PES polymer matrix interface as demonstrated from modeling results. In terms of performance, water flux has been boosted 4-fold after adding small quantities of Cu@Fe3O4 to PES polymer while keeping BSA and MB rejection high (up to 90%) which explains the potentiality of the fabricated UF membranes for wastewater treatment.