Fabrication of anti-fouling polyamide nanofiltration membrane by incorporating streptomycin as a novel co-monomer

Abstract

Polyamide (PA) thin-film composite (TFC) nanofiltration (NF) membrane has extremely broad application prospects in separation of monovalent/divalent inorganic salts mixed solution. However, membrane fouling is the main obstacle to the application of PA TFC NF membrane. Streptomycin (SM) is a hydrophilic antibiotic containing a large number of hydroxyl and amino groups. In this work, the NF membrane was prepared via interfacial polymerization (IP) between trimesoyl chloride (TMC) in the organic phase and SM/piperazine (PIP) mixture in the aqueous phase. The NF membrane structure and performance were characterized in detail. The results showed that SM successfully participated in the IP. The negative charge and hydrophilicity of membrane surface were improved. The prepared membrane exhibited good anti-adhesion and anti-bacterial performance. Additionally, when the SM concentration was 2%, the prepared membrane exhibited the optimal permselectivity. The water permeance was 89.4 L·m –2 ·h –1 ·MPa –1 . The rejection of NaCl and Na 2 SO 4 were 17.17% and 97.84%, respectively. The NaCl/Na 2 SO 4 separation factor of the SM2-PIP/TMC membrane in 1000 mg·L –1 NaCl and 1000 mg·L –1 Na 2 SO 4 mixed solution was 40, which was 3.3 times that of PIP/TMC membrane. It indicated that SM2-PIP/TMC demonstrated excellent monovalent/divalent salts separation performance. This work provided an easy and effective approach to preparing anti-fouling NF membrane while possessing superior monovalent/divalent salts separation performance.