Abstract
Fullerenol C 60 (OH) 24 was incorporated into a polyamide (PA) selective layer to develop novel thin film nanocomposite (TFN) hollow fiber membranes for low molecular weight cut-off ultrafiltration. TFN membranes were fabricated using the interfacial polycondensation technique by alternately pumping a fullerenol dispersion into the triethylenetetramine (TETA) aqueous solution and the isophthaloyl chloride solution into hexane through polysulfone hollow fiber membranes. The contact angle of the skin layer was found to decrease sharply from 34 to 21° when the concentration of fullerenol increases up to 0.5 wt. % in the TETA aqueous solution. Antifouling properties of the PA/fullerenol membranes were found to be superior to the initial membrane. The maximum fouling recovery ratio was observed for the TFN membrane with 0.3–0.75 wt. % of fullerenol in the TETA aqueous solution.
Highlights
Thin film composite membranes (TFC) are the most frequently used membranes for reverse osmosis (RO), forward osmosis (FO) and nanofiltration (NF)
Fullerenol dispersions were prepared by addition of 0.05–1.5 wt. % of fullerenol in 0.3 wt. % TETA aqueous solution
For the first time fullerenol C60(OH)22–24 was incorporated into the thin PA layer and hollow fiber thin film nanocomposite (TFN) membranes for ultrafiltration with low-molecular weight cut-off were fabricated by interfacial polymerization (IP)
Summary
Thin film composite membranes (TFC) are the most frequently used membranes for reverse osmosis (RO), forward osmosis (FO) and nanofiltration (NF). Besides the trade-off between permeation and rejection the main shortcoming of operating TFC is membrane fouling which may involve pore blocking, plugging and clogging, chemical degradation, cake and film formation on the membrane surface caused by microorganisms, organic matter and inorganic material. The main challenge in designing TFC membranes is increasing the membrane fouling resistance without sacrificing membrane performance. In order to avoid the fouling of TFC membranes, chlorine is commonly used as a disinfectant, this may lead to several harmful side products due to the degradation of the polyamide skin layer [4]. The most effective approaches to increase the fouling resistance of TFC membranes is to improve the hydrophilicity and charge properties of membrane skin layer, to change surface roughness, and to utilize steric repulsion effects [5]
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