Abstract
Biofouling is the Achilles heel to membrane-based separations. Development of novel fouling control approaches is very demanding for world-wide application of membrane technologies. Herein, a synergistic effect due to surface hydrophilicity and anti-microbial properties was endowed by d-tyrosine grafting onto a commercial microfiltration polyamide nylon membrane using alginate dialdehyde (ADA) as a green facile platform. The d-tyrosine grafted membrane surfaces were characterized using ATR-FTIR, XPS, SEM-EDX, and AFM. d-tyrosine and ADA grafting significantly increased membrane hydrophilicity and vastly decreased surface roughness thereby mitigating biofouling with improved permeability performance. During pure water filterability test about 74% higher permeability was observed compared to the pristine membrane. Further, the flux recovery ratio for the d-tyrosine-ADA-nylon membrane (91%) was significantly higher than the pristine membrane (42%). Also, the d-tyrosine-ADA-nylon membrane demonstrated excellent antibiofouling performance when incubated with E. Coli culture. Henceforth, this novel membrane functionalization establishes a new green facile platform to alleviate biofouling with the synergistic effects of anti-microbial and surface hydrophilicity properties. Moreover, this functionalization is quite simple and direct, having the potential for scaled-up industrial application.
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