Dual functional GO-Ag incorporated nanocomposite pervaporation membrane with alcohol dehydration performance and enhanced antibacterial property

Abstract

Multi-functional membranes are the focus of future membrane technology development. The removal of bacteria and other organisms from water is essential for purifying solutions and controlling biofouling in membrane filtration. This experiment successfully prepared GO-AgpHx nanocomposite films for alcohol dehydration with an antibacterial effect. GO-AgpHx dispersions with different pH values (pH = 1–11) were successfully prepared. With in situ reductions, Ag nanoparticles (AgNPs) or AgCl nanoparticles (AgClNPs) will be on the GO surface and make GO-AgpHx nanocomposite intercalate in GO nanosheets and have antibacterial properties. Moreover, the intercalation of nanoparticles increases the distance between GO nanosheet layers. Compared to others, the distance between GO-AgpH11 layers is 9.16 Å, which gave a flux of 2331.66 g/m2h, and a water concentration in permeate of 98.07% in the pervaporation test (feed: 70% isopropanol aqueous solution), corresponding to the highest pervaporation separation index (PSI) value among other membranes. In the antibacterial test against Escherichia coli, the antibacterial level of pure GO films was 89.3%. Surprisingly, the antibacterial properties increased to 99.9% in almost all membranes with different pH values. Due to the synergistic effect between AgNPs and GO, GO-AgpHx showed lower molecular transmission resistance and higher antibacterial effect. This research could lead to developing a high-performance antibacterial membrane for membrane separation applications.